An all-encompassing victory for Modi and BJP
Banking on even better relations between Bangladesh and India
We congratulate Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for winning a landslide victory in the Indian elections. The 303 seats won by the BJP give it a bigger majority from when it won the elections in 2014, and the increased percentage of popular vote it received undoubtedly shows that its policies have gone down well with the Indian people. Now that the BJP has a clearer mandate, it will be even more interesting to see what policies it implements and whether it sticks to the ideology of Hindu nationalism that it has propagated in the past, pushing the secular ideals of India onto the backseat.
Some of the electioneering issues—such as the topic of the National Register of Citizens of India, and the Modi government offering citizenship to Bangladeshi Hindus—did concern us. But under Prime Minister Modi's leadership, India and Bangladesh have already built upon their historically good relationship. And we hope that during his new term, Modi will continue to lead India down that path.
Despite our special relationship, however, there are a number of issues that need to be ironed out—especially over Teesta water-sharing, which has unfortunately dragged on much longer than expected. Now that Modi has a bigger mandate, we hope that he would address the Teesta issue more assertively as well as the other aforementioned matters that concern our interest.
We hope that after its back-to-back victory, the BJP government will continue to work with the Bangladesh government to resolve these issues through dialogue, in ways that are beneficial to both our countries.