It has been more than a week since deposed Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is in India. While Hasina-led Awami League's arch-rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said that it will be difficult to have mutual cooperation with India if it continues to host Hasina, the position of the interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus seems to be absolutely different.
Md Youhid Hossain, the interim government's Foreign Affairs Adviser, on Monday said that Hasina's extended stay in India would not hurt India and Bangladesh's bilateral ties.
He added that the country will always try to maintain good relations with New Delhi. Sheikh Hasina resigned and landed in India last week after widespread protests against her government's controversial jobs quota system took a wildly different turn.
These protests eventually snowballed into a movement demanding Hasina's resignation. "This is a hypothetical question. If someone stays in a country why the relations with that particular country would be affected? There is no reason for that," he was quoted as saying by NDTV.
He added that both Dhaka and New Delhi have their interests, which they will follow. Hossain said that the relations between the two countries are not affected by presence of one person inside the country, referring to Hasina's extended stay in India.
Previously, he told the diplomats, including Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Pranay Verma, stationed in Dhaka: "We believe that all our friends and partners in the international community would continue to stand by the interim government and our people as we embark on charting a new future for Bangladesh."
He also confirmed that the country was committed to upholding all agreements made with other countries. Hossain also accused the Sheikh Hasina-led regime of gross human rights abuses to suppress a popular movement, which eventually resulted in the fall of an "authoritarian government."
Hossain, a former career diplomat, said that Bangladesh experienced a "second liberation" last week due to a mass uprising led by "our courageous students." During the first briefing of the foreign ministry, Hossain said that the matter of bringing Sheikh Hasina back to Dhaka falls under the jurisdiction of the law ministry.
Meanwhile, the US has denied any allegations of its involvement in the Bangladesh crisis that led to Sheikh Hasina's ouster. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre said that Bangladeshi people should determine the future of their own government. She also stated that the US will continue monitoring the situation in Bangladesh.