Bangladesh’s political landscape is undergoing a rapid transformation ahead of the general election which is to take place in February 2026. Student advisers and the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party, which extended support to the interim government from the beginning, are positioning themselves to make the most out of the current set-up and are effectively challenging the older two-party system featuring the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
Signs of this new political configuration were evident when Mohammed Yunus, Chief Adviser to the interim government, was seen at the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York in the company of Naib Ameer of the JEI, politician Syed Abdullah Mohammed Taher and Tasneem Zara, a young leader from the student-backed and newly formed National Citizen Party (NCP). The delegation also included Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir of the BNP. But the presence of at least two Jamaat leaders and the elderly Alamgir showed that the NCP and the Jamaat have covered a great political distance within the last year.
On the ground
There is considerable frustration among the supporters of the Awami League and the BNP as the leadership in both parties is not responding to the changes that are sweeping across Bangladesh’s politics. With the flight of Awami League leaders from the country, Khaleda Zia’s BNP was the immediate beneficiary as it was expected to take charge in case an election was held by December 2024 or January 2025. As the interim government delayed the election, the BNP chose to wait and became restive only when it became clear that the students would form their own party. In the process it lost valuable time and suffered reputational damage as Bangladesh was rocked by a series of violent incidents which included the brutal killing of Lal Chand Sohag, a trader in Dhaka on July 9, 2025. The BNP’s cadre had to bear the blame.
The former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, who is based in New Delhi, has been in touch with her party cadre (the Awami League) on the ground but has not held a single press interaction, virtual or in person. She has not designated anyone on the ground in Dhaka as the party has been banned since May 2025 (In October 2024 Awami League’s student wing was banned). Neither has she or her colleagues expressed remorse over the loss of lives in the protests of July-August 2024.
At the same time, the BNP’s pitch for political power is weak as its top leadership is still in exile.
When senior BNP leaders organised a rally as a show of the BNP’s strength in May 2025 and accused Mr. Yunus of delaying elections — the party had demanded elections by December 2025 — the BNP’s Acting Chairman, Tarique Rahman, addressed the gathering from his London home (he has been based here for nearly two decades because of his disputes with Ms. Hasina and the military). Sources in the BNP have indicated that he may return in November but there has been no announcement of a definite date for his return.
That the BNP has still not been able to bring back Mr. Rahman from London in what is now a Hasina-free Bangladesh is a sign that its relations with the interim government are not as normal as they may appear. The BNP has not given a clear explanation for Mr. Rahman’s absence in Dhaka, with the elections just months away. The Awami League’s inability to delegate responsibility to some of its over ground leaders such as Saber Hossain Chowdhury has also not gone down well with the party’s traditional supporters. The party’s leaders who are in exile have countered this with the line that delegating responsibilities would make local leaders vulnerable to severe actions by the interim government. But the common man in Dhaka is of the opinion that a lack of delegation by Ms. Hasina only reveals the political insecurity of the Sheikh Hasina family.
The new players
The NCP and the Jamaat are increasing pressure on Mr. Yunus to ban more political parties and introduce a proportional representation (PR) system for the election. Their argument is that the PR system would ensure a “level playing field for all political parties”. In fact, the PR system would increase pressure on the BNP which remains the sole inheritor of the older political system on the ground. The BNP has also been humiliated in campuses after facing defeat in the student union elections at Jahangirnagar University and Dhaka University where Jamaat-backed student panels won. Jamaat-student coordination on campuses is supported by the fact that some of the student activists were trained under the Jamaat’s student wing, Shibir.
There are several takeaways from the emerging plot. First, the BNP’s long-held argument that an interim government would be apolitical has been proved wrong. During the rule of the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League, the BNP was the strongest proponent of an interim government to conduct credible elections. Yet, the 2024 interim government, which the BNP had welcomed initially, has in turn thrown up new challengers for the BNP. If the BNP wins the election in 2026 or manages to emerge as the single largest party, it would be because the history of the two-party-led system still has significant appeal in Bangladesh.
The Army’s muted stand
Second, the pause in two-party politics under the interim government has been a reality check for the Bangladesh military. Unlike his predecessors such as General Ershad, the current Bangladesh Army chief, Gen. Waker-Uz-Zaman, has refrained from direct interference in the political domain even though the army took over magisterial powers following the serious deterioration in the law and order situation. On occasions, Gen. Zaman has said that the military could step in if the interim government makes compromises in areas that the army considers vital for Bangladesh’s security.
The Bangladesh army’s real test is expected in winter 2025 when politics will heat up in Dhaka as the International Crimes Tribunal is to deliberate on the future of Ms. Hasina and her colleagues. At the moment, the army appears to be under pressure. In December 2024, Gen. Zaman was successful in scuttling the launch of the so-called July Proclamation that aimed to replace the 1972 constitution. But he could not do this on August 5, 2025 when Mr. Yunus announced it as a guiding document for Bangladesh.
Third, within the nationalism-centric party system of Bangladesh, the Jamaat-e-Islami, with its pro-Pakistan history of 1971, is yet to make a convincing nationalist pitch for the elections as it continues to be an organisation with a transnational ideological network across multiple countries including the United States, the United Kingdom and Pakistan. If the student leaders of the NCP and the Jamaat leadership can continue to keep the BNP under pressure during the interim administration (it has already banned the Awami League), a new political bloc featuring the Jamaat and popular student activists could well emerge as a determining force in the election. The Jamaat has a history of aligning with the BNP as a junior partner during 2001-06 (during 1991-96, it gave outside support to the BNP), but with the students, it could emerge as a senior partner.
Finally, the revival of the Jamaat and its riding the movement with popular student activists would provide it the vehicle that it has been searching for long. With this, it would be able to reinvent its problematic image and merge into the mainstream politics of Bangladesh.
Published – October 15, 2025 12:16 am IST
