Bangladesh student leader Nahid Islam quits Yunus' govt, set to form new party

Bangladeshi student leader Nahid Islam has resigned from the country’s interim government and is expected to form a new political party.

Last year, Islam was one of the leaders of the movement against Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s policies under the bannder of Anti-Discrimination Student Movement. As the opposition parties and Islamist groups joined them, the student movement turned into a bigger anti-Hasina movement. After the military sided with them, Hasina was forced to feel the country on August 5. Days later, the military and protesting groups propped Muhammad Yunus as the unelected leader of Bangladesh.

Islam had joined Yunus’ government as an adver to the information and broadcasting ministry, but he resigned from the post on Tuesday.

A new political party is going to be launched on Friday afternoon at the initiative of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement and the National Citizens Committee and Islam is expected to be the convenor of the party.

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The decision was in the making for days. On Sunday, Islamd met Yunus and it is understood that he had conveyed his desire to resign in the meeting. When he arrived for the meeting at Yunus’ residence, his car had the official flag but it was absent when he left after the meeting.

Islam’s new party indicates that the resumption of electoral democracy could be on the cards soon or at least the student groups that led the movement against Hasina might start pushing for it. Previously, Yunus has said that elections could be held by the end of 2025.

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Yunus has been an unelected leader with no popular support. Since being propped as the placeholder, he has been roundly criticised for presiding over cyclic violence against minorities, including Hindus, and patronising Islamists in the country, visible in the form a free hand that Islamists have got under his rule.