India faces its ‘greatest strategic challenge’ in Bangladesh since 1971: Parliamentary committee on external affairs

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A ample  fig   of people, nether  the banner of "July Oyikko" (July Unity), clasp  a protestation  march to the Indian High Commission, successful  Dhaka connected  December 17, 2025.

A ample fig of people, nether the banner of "July Oyikko" (July Unity), clasp a protestation march to the Indian High Commission, successful Dhaka connected December 17, 2025. | Photo Credit: ANI

The developments successful Bangladesh airs the “greatest strategical challenge” to India since the Liberation War of 1971, a Parliamentary sheet has said successful its report. The study of the Parliamentary Standing Committee connected External Affairs, chaired by Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor, has covered the turbulent India-Bangladesh narration of the past 2 years and said that Bangladesh is witnessing a “shift” and that New Delhi could extremity up losing the “strategic space” successful Dhaka without indispensable recalibration.

“India faces its top strategical situation successful Bangladesh since the Liberation War of 1971. The situation successful 1971 was existential, a humanitarian crisis, and the commencement of a caller nation. Today, the menace is subtler but astir apt graver, much serious; a generational discontinuity, a displacement of governmental order, and a imaginable strategical realignment distant from India,” the study said, quoting an adept who deposed earlier the committee connected June 27, 2025.

“The illness of the Awami League dominance, the surge of youth-led nationalism, the re-entry of Islamists, and intensifying Chinese and Pakistani power collectively marked a turning point,” said the report, adding, “If India fails to recalibrate astatine this moment, it risks losing strategical abstraction successful Dhaka not to war, but to irrelevance.”

Giving a elaborate relationship of interactions held betwixt the Committee and officials of the Ministry of External Affairs since the autumn of the Sheikh Hasina authorities connected August 5, 2024, the study said that India has taken the close determination successful providing structure to ousted Prime Minister Hasina but pointed retired that New Delhi needs to guarantee that Ms. Hasina does not transportation retired governmental activities aimed astatine her state from Indian soil.

Giving refuge to Sheikh Hasina has been a large contented betwixt India and Bangladesh since the autumn of the Awami League authorities connected August 5, 2025, and the substance has travel up repeatedly since Hasina was fixed a decease condemnation connected November 17, 2025, and the authorities successful Bangladesh person been accusing Ms. Hasina and her colleagues of fomenting occupation successful assorted parts of Bangladesh.

Explaining Ms. Hasina’s actions, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri told the committee she is issuing her statements utilizing “personal connection devices that she has entree to” and that India “does not supply her with a governmental level oregon immoderate governmental abstraction to undertake governmental enactment from Indian territory”.

Bangladesh’s interim authorities has banned governmental activities of the Awami League, and the enactment is improbable to enactment successful the February 2026 predetermination that the Election Commission of Bangladesh has announced. The study said that Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri briefed the committee members connected August 4, 2025, astir the governmental scenery of Bangladesh, particularly the emergence of a caller governmental party–National Citizen Party–launched by the pupil activists who were instrumental successful overthrowing the Hasina government. It besides noted that the antecedently banned Jamaat-e-Islami has staged a instrumentality and had its electoral registration restored. “Continuing prohibition connected the Awami League volition evidently telephone into question the inclusiveness of immoderate aboriginal elections successful Bangladesh,” said the report.

The committee was told by the officials that applicable discussions betwixt the Centre and States person been held astir the Ganga Water Treaty, which is owed for renewal successful December 2026, but that specified a treatment has yet to commence with Bangladesh. Responding to this, the committee has recommended that the “Government of India should initiate bilateral discussions with Bangladesh astatine the earliest to debar immoderate vacuum post-2026 period.”

Published - December 18, 2025 10:07 p.m. IST

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