Two BNP Hindu candidates link victory to equal rights for Hindus in Bangladesh

The only two Hindu men who contested on BNP tickets and were elected from Muslim-majority areas said their victory affirms that the Hindu minority will be treated as equal citizens and that their rights will be protected by the BNP government, as the party secured a clear majority in the 2026 general election in Bangladesh.

Senior BNP leader Nitai Roy Chowdhury, who won from Magura-2, and Gayeshwar Chandra Roy, elected from Dhaka-3 covering Keraniganj and adjoining outskirts of the capital, asserted that their mandate carried a broader political message, since both leaders were chosen by electorates where Muslims form the overwhelming majority and where communal polarisation had been widely debated over the past year and a half, The Wire reported.

The two BNP lawmakers maintained that their electoral success demonstrated confidence among minority voters in a BNP-led dispensation, and they emphasised that equal citizenship rather than religious identity would guide governance.

Chowdhury said Hindu voters had widely backed him and insisted that the party would not permit Bangladesh to be divided along religious lines, while adding that Hindus were citizens entitled to live peacefully with full rights guaranteed by the state.

Gayeshwar Chandra Roy, who had earlier served as a state minister in the 1991 government led by Khaleda Zia, described himself first as Bangladeshi and only thereafter as Hindu, and he underlined that he had been elected by all sections of voters rather than by a single community.

Referring to the 2022 Population and Housing Census, which recorded Hindus as 7.95 per cent of the 165.16 million population, he suggested that minority rights could only be secured through democratic processes and the rule of law.

Relations between Dhaka and New Delhi had remained strained during the tenure of the interim administration, as India repeatedly raised concerns about alleged violence against Hindu communities following the political transition, citing incidents involving temples and Hindu-owned properties, while the interim government rejected the allegations and maintained that the violence targeted political opponents irrespective of religion.