Hindus among four from minority communities elected to Bangladesh parliament

Dhaka: Four candidates from minority communities, including two Hindus, won in the recent general elections in Bangladesh, with all being nominees of the BNP, which is set to form the government on Tuesday.

Goyeshwar Chandra Roy and Nitai Roy Chowdhury are the two Hindu candidates who won on a Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) ticket. They won from a Dhaka seat and western Magura constituency defeating their rivals fielded by the Jamaat-e-Islami.

Roy is a member of the BNP’s highest policy-making standing committee while Chowdhury is one of prominent vice presidents of the party as well as a senior advisor and strategist for its top leadership.

The third minority MP-elect is Saching Pru, a senior BNP leader and follower of Buddhist faith, representing Marma ethnic community in southeastern hill district of Bandarban, from where he was elected.

The fourth minority candidate, Dipen Dewan, belongs to the Buddhist majority Chakma ethnic minority group, who won from a constituency in southeastern Rangamati hill district.

However, his religious identity is obscure with many describing him as a Hindu.

Hindus make up about eight per cent of the population in the Muslim-majority country of 170 million people.

Dewan defeated an independent Chakma candidate as his nearest rival while Pru defeated a nominee of the student-led National Citizen Party, which was formed last year by the Students Against Discrimination, which led the mass protests against ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina in August 2024.

According to the Election Commission, 79 candidates, including 10 women from religious minority communities mostly Hindus, contested the election on Thursday. While 67 were nominated by 22 political parties, 12 ran as independent candidates.

The Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) fielded the highest number with 17 minority candidates.

It was followed by left-leaning Bangladesh Samyabadi Dal (BSD) with eight minority candidates, little-known Bangladesh Minority Janata Party (BMJP) with eight candidates and left-leaning Bangladesh Samajtantrik Dal (BASOD) with seven candidates.

The BNP fielded six candidates and Jatiya Party nominated four candidates.

The Jamaat-e-Islami nominated a minority Hindu candidate for the first time in its history.

The largest Islamist party fielded veteran businessman Krishna Nandi from a southwestern Khulna constituency who lost but his participation as a Jamaat nominee was widely discussed. He finished as the runner-up in the Khulna-1 constituency conceding defeat to a BNP candidate.

The number of Hindu MPs in the 2024 election was 17 and the same number of Hindus won in the 2018 election with most of them belonging to Hasina’s Awami League.

Led by Tarique Rahman, the BNP swept to power with a two-thirds majority with 49.97 per cent votes and 209 seats in the Thursday's polls, results for which were declared on Friday.

The Jamaat-e-Islami, which was opposed to the country’s 1971 independence from Pakistan, registered its best ever performance with 31.76 per cent votes and 68 seats. The National Citizen Party (NCP) secured the third-highest number of seats, six, and 3.05 per cent votes. PTI AR GSP GSP