DHAKA

Bangladesh's deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's Awami League would not be allowed to participate in elections, a key advisor of Muhammad Yunus's interim government said on Saturday. "The elections will be contested among pro-Bangladesh groups only," said Mahfuz Alam, a top leader of the Anti-Discrimination Movement, which spearheaded the mass uprising that toppled Hasina's Awami League regime and forced her to flee the country on August 5 last year.

Addressing a street rally at central Chandpur district, Alam said only former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Jamaat-e-Islam and other "pro-Bangladesh" groups would carry on their politics in the country. He added that either of these "will establish future governance through a fair electoral process". "But Awami League's rehabilitation will not be allowed in this country," said Alam, a de facto minister without portfolio in Chief Advisor Yunus's administration.

Alam stated that no election would take place until "minimum reforms" were implemented and institutions, allegedly destroyed by the "fascist Hasina government," were restructured. Initially appointed by Yunus as a special assistant in his government, Alam later served as an advisor in his interim cabinet. At a function on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last year, Yunus introduced Alam as the "main brain" behind the student-led movement that toppled the past regime.

The Awami League has been virtually out of the open political landscape since August 5, 2024, with most of its leaders and Hasina's cabinet members either in jail on murder and other criminal charges or on the run at home and abroad. Earlier, the BNP said it was against banning any political party, visibly weighing its support for arch rival Awami League's existence in the political field. It demanded elections in the quickest possible time after minimal reforms, calling it a continued process.

Amid speculation about the formation of a youth-led new political party by the student leaders, BNP said the interim government would lose its credibility if figures of the government formed a party staying in power.