Dhaka, Bangladesh (CNN) -- The Bangladeshi government launched mobile courts in the streets Sunday, jailing more than 100 as the opposition parties began a 36-hour countrywide general strike, the second in a week, police said.
The general strike, enforced to protest a government move to change the electoral system, brought normal life to a standstill in the usually bustling capital of 12 million residents.
Again, motorized vehicles except for a few stayed off the roads across the country. Courts, including the Supreme Court, educational institutions, private business houses, shopping malls, markets and shops remained closed on Sunday, the first day of the week here.
"I've been waiting with my family for hours here at Sadarghat river transport terminal (in Dhaka) as schedules for ferries have been severely disrupted," Monirul Islam, who was planning to go to the southern district of Bhola, told CNN.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its two Islamist allies, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and Islamic Okiya Jote (a platform for Islamic parties) called the strike to protest the move to stop appointing a nonparty caretaker government to conduct general elections.
The two parties are also boycotting Parliament sessions.
The police in Dhaka, the capital, also detained two former ministers from BNP on charges of picketing in the street. Ten mobile courts were in operation Sunday, and the courts jailed 58 people, mostly opposition activists, on picketing charges for varying terms from a month to three months.
Fifty-two more people were handed similar penalties on the eve of the strike on Saturday.
Bangladesh Supreme Court Bar Association president Khandker Mahbub Hossain complained, charging that the arrested opposition leaders and activists were being sentenced summarily, and that it was a violation of human rights.
Home minister Sahara Khatun said the mobile courts were operating to "check anarchy" during the strike.
The government was doing everything in keeping with the democratic system, she said.
"Opposition activists are vandalizing public property and setting fire to vehicles on the streets in the name of strike. The mobile court system is in operation to check such destructive activities," Sahara Khatun told reporters.
More than a dozen of buses and cars were torched in Dhaka in the last two days.
Under the Bangladesh constitutional provision, a caretaker government, headed by a former chief justice, takes over at the end of the tenure of one government and continues until the new government is formed.
The interim government that looks after routine administrative works is primarily responsible for holding free and fair general elections within 90 days.
Bangladesh has a long history of political violence over polls, and the next general election is scheduled to be held in early 2014.
Bangladesh, which has a parliamentary system of government with a largely ceremonial president elected by Parliament, introduced a nonparty caretaker government system for an interim period between two elected governments in 1996 amid bloody street violence over elections.
Bangladesh Supreme Court recently announced the caretaker government provision illegal.
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