India also wants fair election in Bangladesh

Diplomatic Correspondent: India wants the twelfth parliamentary elections of Bangladesh to be peaceful, free, fair and violence-free. The spokesperson of the country’s foreign ministry, Arindam Bagchi, made this comment in response to questions at a briefing yesterday.
He said, the vote will be as the people of Bangladesh want. They will decide everything.
Various countries are very active about the election of Bangladesh. Countries are making various comments and suggestions. The activities of the main opposition parties have also increased around the elections. The Indian High Commissioner in Bangladesh also held a meeting with the leaders of the main opposition BNP after many days. After the meeting, BNP leaders said that they hoped that a caretaker government would be formed before the polls.
When asked about India’s attitude on these issues, Arindam Bagchi said that there are many types of activities around the elections in that country. Many are commenting.
At that time, Arindam Bagchi did not comment on the comments of BNP leaders about caretaker government and caretaker government. He did not comment on the meeting of BNP leaders with the Indian High Commissioner.
The enormous influence of India over Bangladesh’s domestic politics is a result of a geopolitical game in the region since 2001, and reflects the conspicuous absence of the United States. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States remained focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Iraq invasion diverted its attention from South Asia. A growing relationship between the United States and India gave the latter the opportunity to extend its sphere of influence. This was furthered by China’s assertive policy, which began after Xi Jinping became the leader, and South Asia became one of the battlegrounds. The United States had seen India as the antidote to China. As for the Bangladesh policy, despite Washington’s reliance on India, it disagreed with New Delhi on the course of Bangladesh’s democratic trajectory. In 2013-14, New Delhi and Washington went through several rounds of conversations about the need for an inclusive election in Dhaka. Then United States ambassador to Bangladesh, Dan Mozena, made several visits to New Delhi, but India took a firmer stand and rebuffed United States efforts. The United States backstepped, allowed India to do its bidding, and the Hasina government continued; however, the United States had not lost sight of the continued regression of human rights and democracy in Bangladesh as reflected in the annual human rights reports of the State Department.
While they are criticizing the United States for what they are describing as intrusion into Bangladesh’s domestic politics, they conveniently ignore how India has maintained its influence over the past decade and ironically call upon the Indian government to side with the incumbent Hasina regime disregarding their own stated concerns about sovereignty. While the United States has repeatedly reaffirmed that it is not favoring any party over the other but simply underscoring the need for a fair electoral process, the Indian media are asking it to interject on behalf of a specific political party.
They are implicitly suggesting that a fair election will deliver a victory to the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). This concern is difficult to square with their claims that Bangladesh has achieved remarkable economic and social successes in the past fourteen years and that Hasina has the support of most of the population.
The argument that a victory of BNP will reignite militancy disregards the global context of the rise of transnational and regional terrorist groups around the world and the changed circumstances. It is not a stretch to suggest that such an argument is nothing short of using Islamist bogeymen to justify undemocratic behavior.