AA Edit | Bangladesh Holds Long-Awaited Polls As India Keeps Watch

A profound transformation is about to take place in Bangladesh with the general elections that will take place today. And India will be watching it with utmost keenness as its ties with the neighbouring nation, with which it shares its longest land border (4,096 km), need total recalibration in the wake of galloping anti-India sentiment. Along with the polls, a referendum is also being held on the constitution that will help determine the future structure of the country with a “Yes” vote an imminent possibility.

While Sheikh Hasina's former ruling party Awami League, once supported by at least 30 per cent of the 170-million electorate, has been barred from the polls by the interim government, the parties she may have tried to crush during her long reign — the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) with nine allied parties which faces a coalition of 11 parties led by Jamaat-e-Islami, which includes those of protesting students who brought down the regime in 2024 — are the most prominent in the fray.

Irrespective of which party or alliance runs out the winner, India’s immediate task would be to reach out and attempt to revive a bilateral relationship that was once the blueprint for ideal cooperation in South Asia with trade ballooning 600 per cent in Hasina’s 15 years in power while the border infra was secured and Dhaka had decisively acted against safe havens for militants that were used to disrupt life in India’s northeast.

The problem is the younger Bangladeshi generation, comprising 44 per cent of the electorate along with Gen Z voters, feels India has been overbearing in its unquestioning support of Hasina, endorsing disputed polls in 2014, 2018 and 2024, thus destroying democracy and, most recently, playing politics in sport by barring a cricketer from the IPL. Hasina fleeing to India and gaining a haven has been the sore point that affected the ties and turned so much of the sentiment against India.

The polls may not have come soon enough after Hasina’s regime was toppled in July 2024 and the interim administration, led by Muhammad Yunus who was foisted in that position by liberal forces in the US, played ducks and drakes with India while hobnobbing with China and encouraging the Islamist Jamaat and more extreme elements to rave and rant against India. But the restoration of partial democracy will be the highlight even as the former microfinance banker promises to leave once the polls determine who will rule.

While the polls are not free because of the exclusion of the Awami League — in 2024, the BNP chose to boycott the election — India must be hoping that they will be fair enough to shine the light on a decisive winner so that there will be no doubt over who to deal with in attempting to repair ties. The matter of Hasina’s extradition cannot be sidelined as it will most certainly come up in talks with the new government. To balance that pressure with a long-term vision of stable relationship with a neighbour will be the tricky task India will be facing soon as the results are out in Bangladesh.