BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has said Bangladesh’s relations with India will not be held hostage to a single issue and that the presence of deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina in India will not deter Dhaka from pursuing broader bilateral ties.
Speaking to Indian news outlet The Hindu, Fakhrul said Bangladesh would expedite projects that serve its national interest and intensify development partnership with India.
“We believe that Hasina has really committed serious human rights violations. There is a popular demand to punish her and we believe that India should hand her over to us. But not handing over Sheikh Hasina to Bangladesh will not be a deterrent to build broader relation including trade and commercial ties. We want to build even better ties,” he said.
He stressed that Bangladesh-India relations should not be “captive” to a single issue.
Bangladesh, under the interim government, has repeatedly urged India to hand over Sheikh Hasina and several senior Awami League leaders who fled following the 2024 uprising, but India has not responded to the requests so far.
Fakhrul said there is a legal process for Hasina and her ministers and bureaucrats who were accused of carrying out murders and criminal acts during the uprising.
“That process will continue,” he said.
Referring to past experiences, Fakhrul said bilateral relations have faced difficult issues before but cooperation should not be overshadowed by disputes.
“America and China have many difficulties in bilateral ties yet they are working with each other. We should not stick to just one issue in India-Bangladesh relation,” he said.
Highlighting BNP’s historical role in politics, he recalled that after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in August 1975, when Sheikh Hasina was based in India, BNP founder Ziaur Rahman visited India and hosted Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai in Dhaka. He also noted that Ziaur Rahman met Indira Gandhi in Delhi in January 1980, calling it a “statesmanlike approach”.
Fakhrul said several unresolved issues, including renewal of the Ganga Waters Treaty and border killings, would require dialogue.
“We can’t fight a war with India. We need to talk. Those who talk about fighting India are speaking like insane.”
Along with Chairman of BNP Tarique Rahman, Mirza Fakhrul is in favour of reconciliation with political rivals and visited the leaders of the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami and National Citizen Party (NCP) on Sunday (15 Feb).
He said revenge and violence are harmful to democracy and criticised the interim government for failing to initiate reconciliation after the August 2024 uprising.
“Prof Yunus could not go outside of the brief that the leaders of the uprising gave him,” he said.
Fakhrul also presented BNP’s 31-point agenda as an opportunity for Bangladesh and India to expand cooperation in trade, commerce, capacity building and digital infrastructure.
“India has resources in technical education and we have a large number of unemployed youngsters. We need to help them with capacity building so that they can get jobs in the Gulf,” he said.
He also pointed out that the BNP government will have to deal with the burden of loan that the Awami League government has left behind and it will reassess various projects to see which of the mega projects are wasteful.
“Out of these projects we will retain the ones that serve Bangladesh’s interest,” he said.
