The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) under Tarique Rahman won the country’s Feb. 12 election, gaining 209 of the 300 seats in parliament, while the Islamist-led Jamaat-e-Islami alliance took 68 seats. This came in the wake of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina being ousted in student-led protests in 2024 and with her Awami League being barred from contesting it.
Developments in Bangladesh are being closely watched beyond its borders. It is the world’s eighth-most populous country, and Rahman now faces the daunting task of steering the South Asian nation of around 180 million people through high inflation and rising unemployment.
The war in the Middle East poses a massive energy crisis for Bangladesh, as one-third of its total gas supply comes from Qatar and Oman in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Sheikh Hasina had been in power since 2014, after the BNP boycotted what they considered a “scandalous farce” of an election. Her regime fell after anti-government protests in summer 2024. According to UN investigators, up to 1,400 people died in the student-led unrest. She is living in exile in India after being sentenced to death in absentia last November for crimes against humanity.
The main Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, had joined forces with the BNP following the student uprising. They allied with the youth-centered National Citizen Party, formed in 2025, that played a major role in the turmoil. The latter won six seats.
Rahman and his party must also contend with a package of reform proposals designed to prevent a return to authoritarian rule. Known as the July National Charter, the plan outlines constitutional, institutional and electoral changes, including introducing a bicameral legislature and setting term limits for prime ministers.
It was signed last October by leaders of the major political parties and approved by voters in a referendum held the same day as the parliamentary elections. The reforms will make it harder for an executive to act in a way that is unchecked by any other institution. That was a fundamental issue that needed to be addressed.
The BNP has already said it plans to deepen relations with China, Bangladesh’s largest trading partner. Relations with neighboring India, however, could prove more complicated. Delhi has so far not responded to requests from Bangladesh to extradite Hasina.
Students have turned against India, with “Dhaka, not Delhi” slogans splashed on walls at Dhaka University. The youth wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh Islami Chatrashibir, stunned the country in September when it secured a major victory in the student elections at the university, a bastion of left-liberal politics where the 2024 revolution was hatched. They also prevailed in three other schools.
“Delhi is struggling in Dhaka because of deep anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh and a hardening, often a hostile turn, in India’s own domestic political discourse towards its neighbour,” according to Avinash Paliwal, who teaches politics and international studies at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.
Many in the country blame Delhi for supporting an increasingly authoritarian Hasina in her final years. They remember the previous disputed general elections and Delhi’s endorsement of them. Bangladeshis think the destruction of democracy was supported by India and that it views Bangladesh less as a sovereign equal than as a pliant backyard. This grievance is layered atop older complaints over border killings. Jamaat-e-Islami’s strongest victories were in areas bordering India.
Jon Danilowicz, a retired American diplomat who previously served in Bangladesh remarked that the challenge for Rahman “will be how far the BNP can go towards restoring relations with India without facing a public backlash.”
Pakistan, India’s rival that Delhi defeated in 1971 to secure Bangladesh’s independence from the country it was once part of as East Pakistan, remains a central, if sensitive, factor in the equation. The Awami League supported the secession while the BNP has always been more favourable to Pakistan.
After Hasina’s fall, Dhaka wasted little time in mending fences with Islamabad. A direct Dhaka-Karachi flight resumed after a 14-year hiatus. Mohammad Ishaq Dar visited Bangladesh – the first visit by a Pakistani foreign minister in 13 years. Senior military officials have exchanged trips, security co-operation is back on the table, and trade climbed 27 per cent in 2024-2025.
The optics are unmistakable: a once-frosty relationship has thawed. “What concerns us is not that Bangladesh has ties with Pakistan -- as a sovereign country, it is entitled to,” Smruti Pattanaik of the Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, told the BBC. “What was unusual was the near absence of engagement during Hasina’s tenure. The pendulum had swung too far in one direction; now it risks swinging too far in the other.”
Delhi has tried to broaden its outreach. Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar travelled to Dhaka last December for the funeral of former prime minister Khaleda Zia, Rahman’s mother, and used the occasion to meet Tarique Rahman. India has also opened channels to Jamaat-e-Islami leaders, including an invitation to the Indian High Commission’s Republic Day reception. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Rahman and “reaffirmed India’s continued commitment to the peace, progress, and prosperity” of those in Bangladesh and India.
Yet these tactical shifts have done little to arrest the broader slide. The current chill is a low unseen even during earlier crises. The contrast with the Sheikh Hasina years is stark.
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