Mint Explainer: The significance of Bangladesh’s election for India

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least developed country. Bangladesh’s GDP in 2023 is estimated to have grown at 6%, as per a World Bank report. There are several other compelling factors to why India would be keenly watching the results of the 7 January poll in the country it helped gain independence from Pakistan in 1971.

Mint takes a look at India’s stakes in the outcome of Bangladesh’s election. India supported Sheikh Mujib ur Rehman during his campaign for an independent Bangladesh. That’s well-remembered by his daughter Sheikh Hasina, the leader of the Awami League and the current prime minister of Bangladesh.

India had also given shelter to her and her sister, Sheikh Rehana, immediately after Rehman was assassinated on 15 August, 1975 in a coup planned by a coterie of middle-level army officers. On the other hand, India’s ties withKhaleda Zia and her Bangladesh National Party (BNP) have never been as warm as that with Hasina. For one, Zia’s close links with the Islamist fundamentalist groups in Bangladesh, some of whom are heavily influenced by Pakistan, have caused unease in India.

Besides, her turning a blind eye to anti-India groups such as the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) taking shelter in Bangladesh has angered New Delhi. Zia and BNP are also seen as cultivating close ties with India’s strategic rival China. India’s official position has been that it will do business with whoever is in power in Bangladesh, and New Delhi has reached out to Zia several times.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi met her during a visit to Bangladesh in 2015. That was three years after Zia’s visit to India in 2012, when she was quoted as telling then Indian external affairs minister Salman Khurshid that her visit marked “a new beginning". Still, ties between