Hasina has to make up her mind, says Jaishankar on her stay in India
Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday that former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s continued stay in India is her personal choice, shaped by the circumstances under which she arrived, but added that it is ultimately up to her to decide how long she wishes to remain there.
Hasina fled to India in August last year after her 15-year rule collapsed amid widespread unrest that left hundreds dead and thousands injured. The 78-year-old was sentenced to death in absentia last month by a special tribunal in Dhaka for “crimes against humanity” linked to her government’s crackdown on student-led protests.
Speaking at the HT Leadership Summit during a conversation with NDTV Editor-in-Chief Rahul Kanwal, Jaishankar refrained from directly commenting on how long Hasina could stay in India.
“Well, that’s a different issue, isn’t it?” he said. “She came here in a certain circumstance, and I think that circumstance clearly is a factor in what happens to her. But again, that is something in which she has to make up her mind.”
Turning to broader India-Bangladesh relations, the External Affairs Minister iterated New Delhi’s longstanding position on the need for a credible democratic process in Bangladesh.
“What we heard was that people in Bangladesh, particularly those now in power, had an issue with how elections were conducted earlier,” Jaishankar said. “If the issue was the election, the first order of business would be to do a fair election.”
Jaishankar expressed optimism about the future of bilateral ties, saying India wished to see Bangladesh’s political direction shaped by the democratic will of its people.
“As far as we are concerned, we wish Bangladesh well,” he said. “Any democratic country likes to see the will of the people ascertained through a democratic process. And I am confident that whatever comes out of that process will take a balanced and mature view of the relationship, and hopefully things will improve.”
Source: NDTV