Two student advisers to Bangladesh’s interim government resign ahead of poll schedule announcement

Two prominent student advisers of the interim government of Bangladesh – Mahfuj Alam and Asif Mahmud Shojib Bhuiyan – tendered their resignations on Wednesday (December 10, 2025), ahead of the announcement of the election schedule in the country.

Nahid Islam, another leading student adviser in the Yunus-led government, had resigned in February, to lead the National Citizen Party, which plans to contest the election.

Mr. Bhuiyan was the adviser in charge of the Ministry of Youth and Sports as well as the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives, while Mahfuj Alam served as adviser to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Earlier this year, in a Facebook post, Mr. Bhuiyan had apologised for his father obtaining a contractor’s licence. He acknowledged that his father’s business had created a “conflict of interest” for him as a member of the interim government. He also drew attention when he called for providing arms training to the youth of Bangladesh for “regional” reasons.

Mr. Alam had earlier risen to prominence when he accompanied Prof. Muhammad Yunus on his first trip to the U.S. after taking office in August 2024. At a Clinton Global Initiative event in New York on September 25, 2024, Mr. Yunus described Mr. Alam as the “brain behind the whole revolution” and introduced him, along with two other student activists, to the audience as former U.S. President Bill Clinton looked on.

More recently, Mr. Alam courted controversy for criticising the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) – two of the leading political parties expected to perform well in the upcoming election, scheduled for February 2026.

At a meeting in September 2025, Mr. Alam alleged that BNP and Jamaat had supported the uprising against Sheikh Hasina and had moved quickly to place their supporters in key positions following Ms. Hasina’s ouster.

His remarks were viewed as problematic, given that the interim government has been consulting major political parties to ensure a smooth transition of power to a democratically elected administration and to advance the July Charter – a set of proposals aimed at bringing permanent reforms to Bangladesh’s governance structure.