The heir to one of Bangladesh’s main political dynasties will take power after his party won a landslide victory in the country’s first general election since a student-led revolution toppled long-time leader Sheikh Hasina in 2024.
Tarique Rahman’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies secured 212 seats, a more than two-thirds majority in Bangladesh’s 300-seat parliament, the country’s election commission said on Friday.
A coalition of 11 mainly Islamist parties led by Jamaat-e-Islami won 77 seats. That included six seats for the National Citizen Party led by some of the students behind the 2024 uprising.
The vote, which saw turnout of 59 per cent, followed the youth-led “monsoon revolution” that ended Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule and raised hopes of a restoration of democratic stability to the south Asian country.
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The BNP, writing on social media, hailed “a clear mandate from the people” as it congratulated Rahman, who is now set to become prime minister.
The polls on Thursday were largely peaceful in a nation that has endured sporadic bouts of political violence.
Electoral officials said Bangladesh also passed a referendum to take a first step towards amending the country’s constitution, as voters backed sweeping political reforms.
These included term limits for the prime minister and efforts to strengthen judicial independence, measures aimed at weakening the executive to prevent a return to authoritarian rule. Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League was barred from contesting the polls.
The election concluded a tense year-and-a-half transition during which Bangladesh has been overseen by a caretaker administration led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus.
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He is expected to step down as soon as next week and return to the Yunus Centre, his social business institution in Dhaka.
Sheikh Hasina’s regime was marred by allegations of human rights abuses and kleptocracy. Opposition parties boycotted two elections during her rule, while a third was widely seen as rigged. A court in Bangladesh last year sentenced Sheikh Hasina to death in absentia for crimes against humanity.
“This election was about a suppressed nation reclaiming its voice,” said Shafqat Munir, senior fellow with the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies in Dhaka. “It’s a nation’s reconquest of democracy. Bangladesh makes a new beginning with this result.”
Rahman has pledged to reset what he has called a “one-sided” relationship with India, which had long backed Sheikh Hasina and has hosted her since she was ousted.
“It’s not healthy to have a tense relationship with India, so he will have to play a balancing act with others,” said Selim Raihan, executive director of the Dhaka-based South Asian Network on Economic Modeling think-tank.
He will also need to navigate a deepening relationship with China, a nascent rapprochement with historic foe Pakistan and a recent trade deal with the US.
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India’s prime minister Narendra Modi said he spoke with Rahman and congratulated him “on his remarkable victory”.
“As two close neighbours with deep-rooted historical and cultural ties, I reaffirmed India’s continued commitment to the peace, progress, and prosperity of both our peoples,” Modi wrote on X.
Rahman (60), has never held public office. He returned to Bangladesh in December after living in self-imposed exile in London for 17 years, avoiding corruption charges that he said were politically motivated.
His mother, Khaleda Zia, was a three-time prime minister who led the BNP for decades before her death in December, while his father, Ziaur Rahman, was an independence leader and former president who was assassinated in 1981.
During the BNP’s last term from 2001 to 2006, Bangladesh was ranked the world’s most corrupt country by Transparency International for four consecutive years.
This week, Rahman apologised on behalf of the party for “any unintentional mistakes made while governing the country in the past”.
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2026
