By Staff Correspondent, Dhaka – The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has stated that the next parliamentary election will be held on time in February next year, despite what it describes as efforts by “certain quarters” to delay the process.
The party’s secretary general, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, told reporters that Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus had assured him the election would proceed as scheduled. He made these comments after senior BNP leaders met with the chief adviser at his official residence in Dhaka on Sunday.
“The election will be held on the date that has been announced. The discussion with the Chief Adviser was fruitful,” he said.
Earlier this month, Yunus had requested the Election Commission to hold the 13th parliamentary polls in the first half of February 2026.
Fakhrul said that a “certain force” is trying to delay the election but asserted, “there is no possibility of postponing it.”
The Chief Adviser had separately invited leaders from the BNP, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, and the National Citizen’s Party to discuss the latest political situation.
The BNP delegation included Standing Committee members Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, Gayeshwar Chandra Roy, Abdul Moeen Khan, Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury, Salahuddin Ahmed, Iqbal Hasan Mahmud, and Professor AZM Zahid Hossain. They were met on the Chief Adviser’s side by Planning Adviser Wahiduddin Mahmud, Law Adviser Asif Nazrul, and Housing and Public Works Adviser Adilur Rahman Khan.
Leaders from Jamaat-e-Islami and the National Citizen’s Party (NCP) held their own meetings with the Chief Adviser before the BNP.
Following his meeting, Jamaat-e-Islami’s Naib-e-Ameer, Syed Abdullah Muhammad Taher, criticized the government, calling it “an unprecedented event” that the election date was announced after a meeting with a party in London, which he said compromised the government’s impartiality.
When journalists asked Fakhrul for his response, he dismissed the claim as “entirely baseless,” stating that “the Chief Adviser has every right to speak with the country’s largest political party.”
Meanwhile, the NCP leaders demanded that the next election be for a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution, a move they say would establish the legitimacy of last year’s student-led uprising. The August 2024 uprising ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, after which Muhammad Yunus took power.
