Dhaka, Bangladesh – Bangladesh heads to the polls on Thursday in an election unlike any in its recent history.

With the long‑dominant Awami League (AL) barred from participating, an Islamist alliance, strengthened by the student‑led National Citizen Party (NCP), has emerged as a powerful contender.

For the first time since independence in 1971, Islamist forces appear poised for their strongest electoral showing, reshaping expectations about the Muslim-majority nation’s political future.

The dramatic shift follows the July 2024 student‑led uprising that ended then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s long, iron-fisted rule. Senior AL leaders now face trial over the deaths of hundreds during the unrest.

In November, Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal convicted Hasina of obstructing justice, ordering killings and failing to prevent punitive violence. Hasina is currently in exile in neighbouring India.

With the AL banned pending trial, its iconic election symbol – the boat – will be absent from the ballot for the first time in the nation’s history.

Islamist bloc on the rise

In this political vacuum, Jamaat‑e‑Islami (JI), long marginalised due to its opposition to Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence, has sought to consolidate the Islamist vote.

Although a key partner, Islami Andolan, pulled out at the last moment over seat‑sharing disputes, 11 parties have united under Jamaat’s leadership.

Islamist parties have traditionally struggled at the polls. Yet, a recent survey points to an unexpectedly close contest: The International Institute of Law and Diplomacy places the alliance led by Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) at 44.1%, just edging past Jamaat’s bloc at 43.9%. Several other polls, however, give the BNP a far more comfortable lead in projected seats.

Political analyst Altaf Parvez believes the country has swung from centre-left to centre-right, if not further right. “People have already accepted that whoever wins the elections, they will have to live in a right-leaning Bangladesh from now on,” he told DW.

BNP, which once allied with Jamaat to counter the AL, now finds itself directly competing with the Islamist coalition – particularly for the millions of young voters energised by the 2024 uprising.

To sway undecided voters, BNP leaders have intensified efforts to portray Jamaat as ‘anti‑independence’, invoking the latter’s 1971 legacy.

NCP’s unexpected alliance, internal divisions

The biggest surprise in this election cycle has been the trajectory of the NCP, a key student‑led force behind the 2024 uprising. A year ago, NCP leaders insisted that the party would contest seats nationwide on its own.

In February 2025, NCP convener Nahid Islam told an Indian media outlet that ‘voters would not trust Jamaat’s leadership’.

“People remember their (Jamaat’s) historical mistakes,” he said, arguing that Islamist politics had ‘no future in Bangladesh’.

The party’s decision to join the Jamaat‑led alliance less than a year later stunned its supporters.

In an interview with DW in January 2026, Nahid Islam stressed that the partnership with Islamist parties was ‘not ideological but purely electoral’. He said, ‘it had proven unrealistic for the NCP to build a nationwide presence within a year’.

The alliance offered ‘a chance to influence post‑election reforms’. He underlined that Jamaat appeared ‘closer than the BNP on reform and anti‑corruption issues’.

But the shift has exposed deep divisions inside the NCP. Several senior leaders have threatened to resign. Others have publicly opposed the move.

One of them, senior joint convener Samantha Sharmin, told DW that many voters saw the NCP as an alternative to establishment politics. But they’re no longer certain and ask whether they should still vote for the party, she said.

Sharmin added that she did not view Jamaat as a reliable partner, citing its history of supporting Pakistan during the 1971 war.

Debates over secularism

The election has also reignited long‑running debates over Bangladesh’s constitutional identity.

The country’s first constitution, written in 1972, enshrined secularism as one of the fundamental principles. But military rulers later reshaped it, first in 1979 under BNP’s founder Ziaur Rahman’s rule, when ‘Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim’ (in the name of Allah) was added to the preamble, and then later in 1988 when then-President Hussain Muhammad Ershad declared Islam the state religion.

After the 2024 uprising, demands for a full rewrite gave way to more limited reforms, with the Constitutional Reform Commission recommending that Islam remain the state religion, with secularism omitted.

In an interview with Qatar’s state-owned media Al Jazeera, BNP Secretary-General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said that ‘secularism was ill‑suited to Bangladesh’, noting its overwhelmingly Muslim population. “If we can ensure their rights, then there is no problem,” he said.

Although the AL long claimed to defend secularism, it never removed Islam’s privileged status.

But tensions remain stark. Four leftist parties boycotted a key July meeting protesting the omission of secularism from the proposed constitutional reforms.

Mahfuz Alam, a key organizer of the uprising and a recently resigned adviser to the interim government, told DW that ‘divisions between secularists and Islamists have hardened into open confrontation’, leaving ‘no space for negotiation’.

“A state cannot function like this,” he said.

DW