Former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has stepped up pressure on the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government to hold the parliamentary election. The Yunus government, installed in August 2024 primarily to hold the parliamentary election, has been non-committal on a deadline for the democratic exercise.
The BNP has demanded that the election must be held by August this year. Reports earlier suggested that the Yunus government is looking at a time-frame that may delay the parliamentary election until early 2026.
Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus was chosen as the chief adviser to run the interim government after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government following a student agitation that erupted over a quota-in-jobs question but turned into a political campaign. Hasina’s Awami League had won the last parliamentary election held in January 2024.
The BNP said that there was no reason for Yunus to delay the democratic process any further now, considering that there was “relative stability in governance”.
“We have repeatedly said that there is no alternative to an elected government. This is the most important aspect of democracy. We believe the election is possible by mid-year, that is, by July-August this year,” said BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir.
Alamgir’s remarks came a day before the Election Reform Commission was scheduled to submit its report to the Yunus government.
“The longer the elections are delayed, the deeper the political and economic crisis will become,” he said.
“We call on the government, the Election Commission and all political parties to take measures to hold the election by mid-year in the greater interest of the country,” said Alamgir, calling for political unanimity on the need to break the status quo.
Pressure on Yunus in Bangladesh
Yunus recently indicated that a poll could be scheduled by the end of 2025 or beginning of 2026, only after electoral reforms, but the timeline of July-August 2025 demanded by BNP is likely to put pressure on the interim government.
A report by SRK nation The quoted multiple sources as saying that the divergence in timelines would make the political landscape in Bangladesh more volatile at a time when the key members of the Yunus’s interim government — including student leaders, who have been enjoying the support of radical Islamist parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami, Hefazat-e-Islam and Hizb-ut-Tahrir — are in favour of delaying the election.
Why is BNP demanding elections by mid-2025?
The report by SRK Nation quoted a source close to Alamgir as saying, “They [members in Yunus government] want to cling on to power by any means and float a political outfit along with a broader alliance with the Islamist parties. They want to buy time as the student leaders do not have any support base as of now.”
Aware of this situation, the BNP strategists are pushing for early polls as they fear that a mood in favour of the Islamist ideals would draw supporters away from the party, SRK Nation report quoted a political observer in Dhaka as saying.
“They have begun preparing for the polls and that’s evident with the BNP leaders attacking the government on bread and butter issues, something they didn’t do earlier,” the political observer said.
BNP-Yunus govt relationship
Since the ouster of former PM Hasina and the interim government coming to power, the BNP and the Yunus cabinet of interim members have been largely on the same page in discrediting the Hasina-led Awami League regime.
Despite reports of targeted attacks on religious minorities in Bangladesh under the Yunus government and the country’s economy struggling, the BNP and Yunus have furthered similar narratives blaming ousted Hasina for all the problems that the country faces. They have brushed aside allegations of misrule and mismanagement.
The differences started creeping in when the student leaders, with the backing from the Islamists, gave the call for discrediting the 1971 Liberation War and a new Constitution, burying the one drafted in 1972.
The BNP and Yunus government were also not on the same page on banning the Awami League from taking part in polls, a demand from the student leaders.
Students leaders have a plan-B
The Telegraph report said that the student leaders, with hardliner Islamists as their mentors, are deferring the election as they are planning to pitch the July-August 2024 uprising against Hasina as the watershed moment, making it their political capital before the polls.

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