DHAKA — Tarique Rahman was sworn in as Bangladesh’s 11th prime minister in Dhaka on February 17, 2026, taking office with a 49-member cabinet five days after his Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) swept the first national elections since a 2024 student-led uprising.
Among the cabinet are two first-time parliamentarians drawn from the protest movement that challenged longtime rule: Nurul Haque Nur and Zonayed Abdur Rahim Saki. Both are junior ministers and neither hails from the BNP, which has returned to power after 20 years.
Rahman, the son of late former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, assumed the top executive post after 17 years of self-imposed exile in London. He now leads a government formed under the country’s 1972 Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, which vests executive power in the prime minister and cabinet drawn from the unicameral Jatiya Sangsad.
Analysts in Dhaka said the inclusion of figures from allied parties consolidates the coalition that propelled the BNP to victory and acknowledges the political capital of last year’s street mobilizations. “Both of them represent parties that were alliance partners of the BNP,” said Asif Shahan, a professor at Dhaka University. “It’s more about awarding the alliance partners.”
Shahan added that both leaders are “important figures in the July [2024] uprising and have a long history of fighting against the last [Hasina’s] authoritarian regime.” Their elevation, he said, is “a recognition of their contribution to the July uprising.” As junior ministers, Shahan noted, their responsibilities will be circumscribed: “The BNP’s bench is quite strong, and a full ministership [for Nur or Saki] would mean that a senior leader from the party had to be dropped,” he said. “Rahman had to strike a balance.”
Beyond coalition management, the appointments are being read as an early signal of how the new government intends to handle demands for accountability and reform that flowed from the 2024 protests, including changes to public sector recruitment, campus policing and the use of emergency powers.
Key dates and sequence
- 2018: Nationwide student demonstrations challenge the longstanding civil service job quota system; the government abolishes the quota that year.
- June 2024: A court reinstates the quota system, triggering fresh protests that broaden into an anti-government uprising.
- July 2024: Student-led mobilization intensifies; Nur emerges as a key organizer.
- February 12, 2026: General elections take place under the supervision of the Election Commission; the BNP wins, marking its return to power after two decades.
- February 17, 2026: Rahman and a 49-member cabinet are sworn in at the South Plaza of the parliament building in Dhaka, formally inaugurating the new administration.
Nur’s path from campus activism to the cabinet
Nurul Haque Nur, 34, grew up in the southern district of Patuakhali and rose to prominence as a University of Dhaka student leader during the 2018 anti–job-quota movement.
The protests drew students and young people nationwide, pressing for reform of a system that had reserved more than half of coveted government jobs. The government abolished the quota that year, but the underlying debates over merit, inclusion and state patronage remained unresolved.
When a court reinstated the system in June 2024, demonstrations re-ignited and rapidly expanded into a broader challenge to then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government. Nur backed the student-led uprising and became a key mobiliser in July 2024, frequently appearing at rallies and negotiation attempts.
He later co-founded Gono Odhikar Parishad, a rights-focused political party that has experienced internal rifts and splinters. In the post-2024 period, Nur moved closer to the BNP-led bloc on reform and governance issues, including demands for an independent judiciary, protections for campus activists and more transparent recruitment into the civil service.
Nur won a seat in parliament in the February 12, 2026 election as a BNP-backed candidate of Gono Odhikar Parishad. He enters government as a junior minister, where his portfolio is expected to intersect with youth, education or administrative reform, areas closely watched by the constituencies that propelled him into public life.
Saki’s long organizing arc and parliamentary breakthrough
Zonayed Abdur Rahim Saki began political activism as a student during the movement against General Hussain Muhammad Ershad, Bangladesh’s ruler from 1982 to 1990, giving him one of the longest protest pedigrees in the new governing lineup.
He was elected president of the progressive Bangladesh Student Federation in 1998 and is joint convener of Ganosanhati Andolan (People’s Solidarity Movement), a progressive party that emerged in the late 2000s with a platform focused on socio-economic justice, secular politics and curbing executive overreach.
Saki ran for mayor of Dhaka North City Corporation in 2015 and stood for parliament in 2018; he did not win either contest. In 2026 he captured the Brahmanbaria-6 seat by a margin of 55,000 votes, turning years of street-level organizing into formal legislative power.
After the result, he addressed supporters about the coalition forged during last year’s protests:
“All parties in the antiauthoritarian movement must remain united in the national interest and respectful of democratic norms.”
He thanked BNP leaders for backing his campaign and framed his entry into parliament as part of a broader effort to strengthen institutional checks on the executive, including more assertive parliamentary oversight of security forces and public spending.
Student leaders’ party enters parliament — and opposition
The National Citizen Party (NCP), formed by student leaders of the July 2024 uprising, entered an electoral alliance with the conservative Jamaat-e-Islami, underscoring how the anti-Hasina movement cut across Bangladesh’s traditional ideological divides.
In its first test at the polls, the NCP won six of the 30 seats it contested. The party’s convener, 27-year-old Nahid Islam, secured a seat, making him one of the youngest members of the new parliament and positioning a cohort of protest-era figures on the opposition benches.
The NCP will sit in opposition with Jamaat. From there, its leaders say they intend to press for guarantees that future elections will be conducted under a neutral administration and for safeguards around the right to protest — issues that were central to their organizing in 2024 and that will now be tested inside formal parliamentary procedure.
Oath-taking at the seat of parliament
The swearing-in took place at the South Plaza of the Jatiya Sangsad (parliament) complex in Dhaka, where President Mohammed Shahabuddin administered oaths to Rahman and members of his cabinet.
The ceremony, held on the steps of the legislature rather than inside the presidential palace, was designed to underscore the return of politics to parliament after years in which the streets and the courts set much of the national agenda. Under Bangladesh’s parliamentary system, the new House — elected from 300 constituencies — will now be the central arena for debate over the quota system, economic recovery and the future balance of power between the executive and opposition.
The National Citizen Party will be part of the opposition with Jamaat-e-Islami in the new parliament, lining up against a government that depends on a broad coalition of parties born out of the same 2024 protests — and setting the stage for a test of whether Bangladesh’s latest transfer of power can translate street demands into durable institutional change.
