India wants 'fair and free elections' in Bangladesh

MEA Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal

India on Thursday said it wants  fair and free elections in Bangladesh.

" “It is our expectation that the elections should be free, fair, inclusive, and participatory in nature," said External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal.

Bangladesh’s interim government chief Muhammad Yunus on Wednesday said he feared forces “from home and abroad” to thwart planned general elections over debarring deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League from contesting.

“Many forces from inside and outside the country will work to spoil the election. Many powerful forces, not minor ones, will attempt to thwart it. Sudden attacks may come,” Yunus’s press secretary Shafiqul Alam quoted him as saying at a high-level meeting on election preparedness.

Chief Adviser Yunus, he said, told the meeting that the election will be “challenging” as “various types of propaganda will be carried out in a planned manner from inside and outside the country”.

Yunus said AI-generated images and videos would also circulate online and on social media platforms, stressing immediate action to prevent the spread of such content.

“We must overcome them (obstacles),” 85-year-old Yunus was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said she had no plans of leaving India, warning that millions of voters would be boycotting the election in Bangladesh if her party, the Awami League, wasn't allowed to participate.

In interviews to a news agency and the UK's Independent, Hasina refused to apologise for the killings that took place in July-August 2024 during the agitation that led to the toppling of her regime. Hasina told Reuters she "lives freely in Delhi but remains cautious given her family's violent history".

“The ban on the Awami League is not only unjust, it is self-defeating,” Hasina said in emailed responses to Reuters — her first media engagement since her dramatic fall from power after 15 straight years at the helm of Bangladeshi politics.

“The next government must have electoral legitimacy. Millions of people support the Awami League, so as things stand, they will not vote. You cannot disenfranchise millions of people if you want a political system that works," she said.