The wide ramifications of this action by the Yunus government have not got attention in Indian media due to its total involvement with India-Pakistan conflict last week but the Indian experts on South Asian affairs are noting how the Narendra Modi government is now totally isolated among the South Asian countries despite being the most powerful nation in this region.

Awami League is the political party founded by the legendary Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and this Party led the struggle of liberation for the formation of Bangladesh in 1971. Since the AL ruled Bangladesh most of the years till 2024 excepting the years under the army rule and two tenures of the BNP led by Khaleda Zia, presently the chairperson of the main opposition party BNP. Sheikh Hasina ruled for fifteen years consecutively since 2009 but had to abandon her position as Prime Minister of the Awami League government on August 5, 2024 and left for India. She is still staying in India and occasionally addressing her AL supporters in Bangladesh through video.

Last week, Dhaka witnessed massive 72 hour rally by the new party of students National Citizens Party (NCP) demanding to the government the immediate banning of all activities of Awami League. NCP is the only party which has taken up the banning of Awami League as its core programme. Earlier there were talks that Awami League will be allowed to function in a truncated form excluding the leaders and workers against whom there are charges of murder and torture. BNP was earlier in favour of allowing AL to participate in the elections under some guidelines, but now with the government’s official ban, the BNP also announced its support saying it is the national demand.

As a result, in the coming elections, the competition will be between the two main parties BNP led by Khaleda Zia, former Prime Minister and the NCP led by the students who engineered the fall of Sheikh Hasina government in August last year through their anti quota movement. The other parties, there so many, are smaller in size, they will try to ally with one group or the other. Jamaat-e-Islami has gained strength in the recent months due to big financial assistance from the Islamic countries abroad but the acceptability of this party among the citizens is very low. The main electoral fight will be limited to BNP and the NCP.

What is the future of Awami League? Awami League has a band of dedicated activists still in the country though many of them can not work openly. the AL will certainly challenge the ban in the court. But the government has inserted some specific provisions in the order which will make it difficult for AL in their legal battle if they want to fight. The AL leader Sheikh Hasina has not been active in the recent weeks. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is already neckdeep in his own problems in dealing with conflict with Pakistan. So the Indian foreign ministry will not like to encourage Sheikh Hasina to take any active role from the Indian soil right now.

Among Bangladesh political observers, there are differing views of the government banning the AL and whether that will finish off the Awami League as a political party.

According to the leading Bangladesh daily Daily Star, the Awami League is not merely a political party—it is a multigenerational institution. Millions of people across the country supported it in the past, many of them born into families that have been part of the party for decades. What will happen to these people in the new reality? How will they react is the important question.

What's more, a ban gives the AL exactly what it needs to recast its image—from oppressor to oppressed. The same party that wielded state power to silence dissent now gets to claim victimhood, says the opinion piece in the Daily. It is also pointed out that Bangladesh is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights(ICCPR) which clearly states that restrictions on political rights must meet the tests of legality, necessity and proportionality.

A blanket party ban—the most extreme form of political restriction—can only be justified when all other less restrictive means have demonstrably failed. The state still has powerful tools at its disposal: it can prosecute individual AL leaders credibly accused of crimes, provide protection for witnesses and activists, disband violent factions, and even impose targeted political sanctions. These mechanisms strengthen justice.

According to this view, Justice demands that we punish the guilty—not everyone who are not directly involved with them. Collective punishment, even when driven by righteous cause, undermines the very legitimacy of transitional justice. History shows that dissolving parties rarely heals nations. It more often deepens fractures, stokes grievances, and makes martyrs of those who once stood accused.

But these arguments are limited to educated circles. At the moment, a political environment has been created by the NCP and Jamaat for total banning of Awami League. There is little possibility that this position will undergo any change before the elections. It can be made possible only by international intervention. Only the U.S. can effectively play a role in creating some space for Awami League in coming elections. But as of now there are no signs that the U.S. will do that. (IPA Service)