An alliance led by Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina won a massive parliamentary majority in the country’s first polls in seven years, officials said on Tuesday. Till mid-evening on Tuesday, the Grand Alliance led by Hasina’s Awami League had won an unprecedented 255 seats in the 300-seat parliament.India lauded the return of democracy to Bangladesh and congratulated Hasina on her triumph, saying it hoped her government would address New Delhi’s concerns over terrorism emanating from that country.“India looks forward to working with the government and the people of Bangladesh in the years ahead for the mutual benefit of the people of the two countries,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a message to Hasina.External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said “the massive participation. and the outcome is a clear demonstration of people’s confidence in multi-party democracy.”Mukherjee said India had raised the issue of terror with the earlier Government, “but unfortunately we met with some denial. So. we had most respectfully reminded them that if you deny the existence of a problem you will never solve (it). I do hope that once the new government comes, we will see what best can be done.”The results showed an alliance of parties backing Hasina, 61, taking a better than two-thirds majority in the poll aimed at bringing the impoverished South Asian country of more than 140 million people back to democracy after two years under a military-backed interim government.Hasina took over as Awami League chief after her father, first president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was killed in an army coup in 1975. She led the Awami League to power in 1996. Her past record suggests she will take a relatively pro-business and pro-economic liberalisation approach, as well as aggressively pursue violent Islamist militants and resist efforts to make Bangladesh an Islamic state.
