Two Hindu candidates were among four from minority communities who won in the recent general elections in Bangladesh. All were nominees of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which is expected to form the government on Tuesday.
Who are the two Hindu candidates?
They are Goyeshwar Chandra Roy and Nitai Roy Chowdhury. They won on a BNP ticket from the Dhaka seat and West Magura constituency, defeating their rival Jamaat-e-Islami fielders, news agency PTI reported.
Goyeshwar Chandra Roy is a member of the BNP’s top standing committee for policy making, while Nitai Roy Chowdhury is one of the party’s senior vice-presidents and a senior adviser and strategist to its top leadership.
According to tritiyomatra.com, Nitai Roy Chowdhury, born January 1949, is a Bangladeshi lawyer, politician, former minister and former member of parliament.
Chowdhury served as Minister of Youth and Sports in the Ershad government. He is the Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
Meanwhile, Goyeshwar Chandra Roy is said to have been born in Keraniganj, Dhaka. He is a former minister of state. In 2008, Roy was first nominated from Dhaka-3 constituency as a BNP candidate and lost to Awami League’s Nasrul Hamid by 6,610 votes.
He was re-nominated by BNP from the same seat in the 11th general election in 2018, the report added.
Significance for India
The election of two candidates from the minority Hindu community is significant for India in the context of attacks on members of the community that have led to strained ties between India and Bangladesh.
New Delhi reacted strongly to the violence following the lynching of Hindu garment factory worker Dipu Chandra Das. He was allegedly tied to a tree and set on fire.
The interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus downplayed the violence, attributing many incidents to criminal motives.
A series of attacks were also reported in December last year after the assassination of Sharif Osman Hadi, the leader of the popular uprising and a vocal critic of India.
In the immediate aftermath of the uprising against the Hasines, homes, places of worship and shops belonging to religious minorities were also attacked across the country, Amnesty International said.
The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council reported more than 500 attacks in 2025, including sexual assault and arson, the AFP news agency reported.
Who are the other two elected MPs from minority communities?
The third elected minority MP is Saching Pru, a senior BNP leader and a Buddhist, representing the Marma ethnic community in the southeastern hill district of Bandarban, where he was elected.
A fourth minority candidate, Dipen Dewan, belongs to the Buddhist-majority Chakma ethnic minority and won from a constituency in the southeastern hilly district of Rangamati.
However, his religious identity is unclear, with many describing him as a Hindu.
Dewan defeated independent candidate Chakma as his closest rival, while Pru defeated the nominee of the National Citizen Party, formed last year by Students Against Discrimination, which led mass protests against ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in August 2024.
Bangladesh election results
According to the Election Commission, 79 candidates, including 10 women from religious minorities, mostly Hindus, stood for election on Thursday.
While 67 were nominated by 22 political parties, 12 ran as independent candidates.
The Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) fielded the most minority candidates, 17.
It was followed by the left-leaning Bangladesh Samyabadi Dal (BSD) with eight minority candidates, the little-known Bangladesh Minority Janata Party (BMJP) with eight candidates and the left-leaning Bangladesh Samajtantrik Dal (BASOD) with seven candidates.
BNP fielded six candidates and Jatiya Party nominated four candidates.
Jamaat-e-Islami has nominated a minority Hindu candidate for the first time in its history.
The largest Islamist party fielded veteran businessman Krishna Nandi from the south-western constituency of Khulna, who lost, but his participation as Jamaat’s nominee was widely discussed. He finished second in the Khulna-1 constituency, conceding defeat to the BNP candidate.
In the 2024 election, 17 Hindu MPs were elected, the same number as in the 2018 election, and most of them belonged to Hasina’s Awami League.
BNP is winning
Tariq Rahman-led BNP swept to power with a two-thirds majority with 49.97 percent of the vote and 209 seats in Thursday’s polls, the results of which were announced on Friday.
Jamaat-e-Islami, which opposed the country’s independence from Pakistan in 1971, recorded its best ever performance by securing 31.76 percent of the votes and 68 seats. The National Citizen Party (NCP) won the third highest number of seats, six and 3.05 percent of the vote.