



Mint Explainer | Bangladesh’s political transition and what it means for India
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Bangladesh will have a new prime minister on Tuesday, with Tarique Rahman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) set to take the oath in Dhaka. Senior foreign representatives will attend the ceremony, including Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla from India.
Mint examines what the political transition in Dhaka could mean for India and the wider region. A new government led by Tarique Rahman will be sworn in following the 12 February general election, in which the BNP and its allies secured 212 of the 300 seats in the Jatiya Sangsad (Bangladesh parliament). The radical Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) and coalition partners won 77 seats.
The polls mark a new and significant chapter in Bangladesh’s politics and history. The Awami League, instrumental in the birth of Bangladesh in 1971, was barred from contesting. It is now a banned party.
This came after Awami League PM Sheikh Hasina was ousted after massive student protests in 2024. The polls followed 18 months of interim rule under Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammed Yunus, making Tuesday’s swearing-in the formal beginning of a new political phase. India will be aiming to stabilize relations after Rahman takes over.
After the “Shonali Adhyay" or Golden Chapter in India-Bangladesh relations during Hasina’s 2009-2024 term in office, ties with Dhaka nosedived with Yunus at the helm. India’s decision to shelter Hasina caused friction in Dhaka. Attacks on Hindu minorities and Yunus’s remarks on India’s landlocked northeast’s dependence on it to access the ocean also raised tensions.
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