How the deck is stacked in Bangladesh

Sheikh Hasina, whose Awami League-led Grand Alliance won a landslide victory in the Bangladeshi Parliamentary elections, took oath of office for the third consecutive term on Monday. While the League alone won 257 seats, the Opposition got just seven, lending credence to allegations of mass scale rigging and intimidation of Opposition workers.

New Delhi, however has reasons to be happy. Hasina has helped resolve several issues which have been thorns in the bilateral relationship since Bangladesh achieved independence in 1971. These include enclaves, where the two nations had small pockets of territory in each other’s lands, reportedly used as gambling stakes centuries ago between two regional kings.
 
She also granted India transit rights across Bangladesh into India’s northeastern states and cracked down on insurgents from India’s Northeast who had been granted shelter on Bangladeshi soil by her predecessor.

While the quiet jubilation in Delhi is justified, there are reasons for caution as well. These include the long-pending Teesta water sharing accord repeatedly torpedoed by West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, China’s growing economic influence in the country and the co-opting of some hardline religious outfits into the ruling coalition. T
 
hough Hasina has adroitly balanced Dhaka’s ties with Beijing and Delhi, the fact remains that China is Bangladesh’s main supplier of weapons  and is financing bridges, railway tracks, airport, and power plants using extremely generous lines of credit. And a Chinese consortium owns almost a quarter of the Dhaka Stock Exchange.

There are also concerns that Awami League’s alliance partner, the Hefazat-e-Islam, might dilute the League’s secular credentials and force Hasina to accept two of its most strident demands: death sentence for blasphemy and declaration of Ahmediyas as kafirs, or non-Muslims. But, as an Indian official said, most of these concerns are speculative, and Delhi did not really have much of a choice.
Source: http://www.newindianexpress.com

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