OPINION | Dhaka's Dangerous Stalemate

The February 12, 2026 election was supposed to close the chapter opened on August 5, 2024, when Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) won 209 of 297 contested seats, while opposition Jamaat-e-Islami won 68 and emerged as the main opposition after the Awami League was barred from contesting.

Source : ABP LIVE

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Key points generated by AI, verified by newsroom

• Bangladesh government faces contested legitimacy amid escalating political confrontations.
• Exiled Sheikh Hasina's return complicates Delhi-Dhaka diplomatic relations.
• Prime Minister Rahman's stalled India visit jeopardizes critical Ganga Treaty.
• Domestic unrest and economic issues demand genuine governance and resolution.

Bangladesh is not in the middle of a routine post-election squabble. Nine months after Tarique Rahman took oath as Prime Minister, the country is sliding into a three-way confrontation that threatens to undo the very promise of the July Uprising: a government that commands a parliamentary majority but lacks political authority, an opposition that lost the election but has captured the street, and a former prime minister in exile in India whose shadow now determines what Dhaka can and cannot do.

The February 12, 2026 election was supposed to close the chapter opened on August 5, 2024, when Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India. Instead, it opened a new one. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) won 209 of 297 contested seats, while opposition Jamaat-e-Islami won 68 and emerged as the main opposition after the Awami League was barred from contesting. On paper, that is a landslide. In practice, Rahman inherited a state where legitimacy is still contested, the constitution is still contested, and the street still believes it has veto power over parliament. The tensions began from day one.

BNP MPs refused to take a second oath as members of a proposed Constitution Reform Council meant to implement the July Charter, arguing the council had no constitutional basis until a referendum formally incorporated it. Jamaat and the National Citizen Party (NCP) boycotted the cabinet swearing-in in protest, with Jamaat saying it would take no oath unless BNP MPs took oath as members of the Council. The referendum, held alongside the election, reportedly saw over 60 percent vote yes, but the question of who gets to interpret that mandate has never been settled. It is a legal dispute that has become a political weapon.

For Jamaat and the NCP, the July Charter is not a technical document. It is their claim to be the true heirs of 2024. The NCP was born out of the student protests that toppled Hasina. Jamaat, banned under Hasina and then rehabilitated under the Muhammad Yunus interim government, has rebuilt itself as the most disciplined organisational force in the country. Together they contested the election as an 11-party alliance, with the NCP seeking to convert street credibility into parliamentary representation. Jamaat chief Shafiqur Rahman warned that if the government acted against the public interest, it would face protest and resistance. The NCP questioned the inclusion of former interim government national security adviser Khalilur Rahman in Rahman's cabinet as foreign minister, calling it proof of election engineering.

In recent weeks, both parties have returned to the language of the uprising: “Delhi na Dhaka” (Delhi or Dhaka), govern first, or face the street. The latest flashpoint is not the Charter, but Hasina herself. Hasina has announced she intends to return to Bangladesh in December and surrender before a court. On November 9, her London-based lawyers, Matrix Chambers, wrote to the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi seeking a new passport and National Identity Card, after the interim government revoked her old documents. Dhaka rejected the request within hours. State Minister for Foreign Affairs Humayun Kabir said Bangladesh does not issue passports to “convicted terrorists” and reiterated the demand for her extradition. The chief prosecutor of the International Crimes Tribunal, Md Aminul Islam, said she would have no option but to face execution of the verdict if she returns. A tribunal in 2025 sentenced her to death in absentia for crimes against humanity linked to the 2024 crackdown, which the UN estimates killed as many as 1,400 people.

This is where the imbroglio between Delhi and Dhaka becomes almost farcical, and dangerous. Dhaka wants Hasina handed over as a convict through the India-Bangladesh extradition treaty. It does not want her to return voluntarily as a citizen choosing to face trial. Delhi, for its part, says extradition is a legal matter to be dealt with accordingly, and that for travel, she would need a travel document. The India-Bangladesh extradition treaty was amended in 2016, but India's Extradition Act still bars surrender for offences of a political character or where the request is not made in good faith, and India has in the past sought assurances against execution in death penalty cases.

But the politics are clearer than the law. A voluntary return would cast Hasina in the light of a martyr, creating a dramatic scene. On the other hand, an extradition request enables Dhaka to hold Delhi responsible for providing her refuge, while Delhi can counter by accusing Dhaka of withholding the necessary documents for her travel. This dynamic allows both sides to project their steadfastness to their domestic audiences. However, the pressing issue remains unaddressed: what will happen if a 78-year-old former prime minister, facing a death sentence, arrives in Dhaka this December?

That unanswered question is now driving the street.

The Awami League, banned since 2024, has announced a three-day nationwide outreach and protest programme from November 14 to 16, demanding restoration of democracy and public security. Its workers have returned to the streets, clashing with BNP workers and police. Crude bombs, arson, and attacks on vehicles have been reported. The BNP, in turn, has told its MPs to stay on the streets. At a parliamentary party meeting on November 9, Rahman instructed lawmakers to remain politically active and confront all plots. Jamaat and the NCP have responded not by joining the BNP's call for unity, but by asking why political parties should do the work of the police.

Therefore, the current crisis in Bangladesh can be characterised by three key fronts: a banned political party attempting to regain its influence, the ruling party striving to assert its control over the streets, and an opposition party that is accusing the government of its inability to effectively govern.

To top it all lies yet another factor that threatens to once again derail Delhi-Dhaka ties and that is PM Tarique Rahman's refusal, so far, to visit India. Tradition in Bangladesh is that a new prime minister visits Delhi first. Rahman has visited China, Japan, Malaysia and the United States, but not India.

Delhi invited him for a bilateral visit and for the BRICS summit it hosted in September. The visit was at one point so close that the President's office briefly issued a notice about cancelling a Change of Guard ceremony for a rehearsal for his ceremonial welcome. Then it collapsed. This is because in Dhaka, a visit to Delhi has become politically toxic.

The NCP has taken the hardest line, demanding that the Indian High Commissioner to Dhaka Dinesh Trivedi be summoned and arguing that Rahman should not visit India before it returns Hasina. The party also called such a visit a betrayal of the people.

Jamaat has been more tactical. It criticised Hasina's appearance at a Delhi media event as a violation of diplomatic norms, but its chief Shafiqur Rahman later said the prime minister could visit India if relations were based on equality and mutual respect, not hegemony.

This is clear messaging that Jamaat wants to keep the door open to Delhi, the NCP wants to close it until Delhi delivers Hasina. The BNP government has tried to split the difference by saying a “propitious environment” is needed before Rahman can visit. Delhi, meanwhile, has linked progress on substantive issues to that visit.

With barely a month left before the 30-year Ganga Water Treaty expires on December 12, New Delhi has signalled it is unlikely to roll over the agreement without a summit-level meeting. Water, trade, and connectivity are now hostages to the Hasina question. Thus, if PM Rahman goes to Delhi without a concession on Hasina, Jamaat and the NCP will accuse him of surrender. If he does not go, the Ganga treaty lapses, trade restrictions harden, and Bangladesh’s economy, which is already sliding from 6 to 7 percent growth rate under Hasina to barely 2 to 3 percent, might plummet further.

Factory closures, inflation, fertiliser shortages and LPG shortages are already fuelling labour unrest and farmer protests across the country.

The way out can be worked out if both Delhi and Dhaka de-link the visit from extradition. Extradition will take years. A prime ministerial visit cannot wait years. Both sides know this. The linkage was a blunder from the beginning, and it should be quietly dropped.

Rahman can visit Delhi to discuss water, trade, visas, and border management, issues that affect ordinary Bangladeshis every day, without resolving Hasina's fate in one meeting.

Additionally, Dhaka needs to decide what it actually wants from Hasina's return. If it wants justice, it should allow a legal process that is credible, including a retrial with the accused present, rather than insisting on execution of an in absentia verdict. If it wants a political spectacle, it should be honest about the cost: a return in December, in the middle of street mobilisation by all three camps, could tip the country into violence. The postponement of the India-Bangladesh consular dialogue that was scheduled for November 17 to 18 in Dhaka – the first in more than two years – shows how quickly routine diplomacy is being sacrificed to this crisis.

Jamaat and the NCP need to decide whether they are an opposition or a parallel government. Boycotting oaths, demanding that the prime minister not travel, and mobilising around anti-India rhetoric may win headlines, but it does not build the institutions the July Charter promised. The Charter was meant to limit executive power and prevent a return to one-party rule. It was not meant to give the losers of an election a veto over the winners.

Lastly, it needs to be understood here that Bangladesh in November 2026 is not 2024. The uprising is over. The election has happened. The question now is simpler and harder: can a country that overthrew a government in the name of democracy learn to live with the results of democracy, even when those results are messy, incomplete, and unsatisfying?

Rahman won the election, but he has not yet been able to bring stability and peace. Jamaat and the NCP lost the election, but they have not yet lost the street. Hasina lost power, but she has not yet lost relevance.

Unless all three parties recognize that none can achieve an outright victory, Bangladesh will remain in a precarious stalemate. In this situation, every unmade visit, every unissued passport, and every unfulfilled oath becomes an excuse for further confrontation. The alternative is not another uprising; rather, it is the slow and often unglamorous task of governance. This includes repairing the economy, ensuring a fair legal process for Hasina, renewing the water treaty, and allowing parliament—rather than the streets—to determine the future of the July Charter. This approach is essential for Bangladesh to avoid becoming a nation that is perpetually on edge.