Zia’s archrivalry with Sheikh Hasina defined the country’s politics for a generation

Former Bangladeshi prime minister Khaleda Zia, whose archrivalry with Sheikh Hasina defined the country’s politics for a generation, has died, her political party said on Tuesday. She was 80.

“The BNP chairperson and former prime minister, the national leader Begum Khaleda Zia, passed away today at 6am, just after the Fajr (dawn) prayer,” the Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) said in a statement.

“We pray for the forgiveness of her soul and request everyone to offer prayers for her departed soul,” it added.

Zia was the country’s first female prime minister.

She had faced corruption cases she said were politically motivated, but in January 2025 the supreme court acquitted Zia in the last corruption case against her, which would have let her run in February’s election.

She had returned to the country in May after undergoing medical treatment in the UK.

In early January, Bangladesh’s interim government had allowed her to travel abroad after Hasina’s government rejected previous requests at least 18 times.

Despite years of ill health and imprisonment, Zia vowed in November to campaign in elections set for February 2026 – the first vote since a mass uprising toppled her arch-rival Sheikh Hasina last year. Zia’s BNP is widely seen as a frontrunner.

But in late November she was taken to hospital, where, despite the best efforts of medics, her condition declined from a raft of health issues.

During her final days, interim leader Muhammad Yunus called for the nation to pray for Zia, calling her a “source of utmost inspiration for the nation”.

Bangladesh’s early years of independence – gained in a bloody 1971 war against Pakistan – were marked by assassinations, coups and countercoups as military figures and secular and Islamic leaders jockeyed for power.

Zia’s husband, president Ziaur Rahman, had seized power as a military chief in 1977 and a year later formed the BNP. He was credited with opening democracy in the country, but was killed in a 1981 military coup. Zia’s uncompromising stance against the military dictatorship helped build a mass movement against it, culminating with the ousting of dictator and former army chief HM Ershad in 1990.

Khaleda Zia waves at the start of a 400km protest march from Dhaka to the northern village of Dinajpur in 1999. Photograph: Pavel Rahmen/AP

Zia’s opponent when she won her first term in 1991 and in several elections after that was Hasina, the daughter of independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was assassinated in a 1975 coup.

Zia was criticised over an early 1996 election in which her party won 278 of the 300 parliamentary seats during a wide boycott by other leading parties including Hasina’s Awami League, which demanded an election-time caretaker government. Zia’s government lasted only 12 days before a nonpartisan caretaker government was installed and the new election was held that June.

Zia returned to power in 2001 in a government shared with the country’s main Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, which had a dark past involving Bangladesh’s independence war.

Zia’s BNP was previously closely allied with the party, and her government maintained the confidence of the business community by following pro-investment, open market policies. Zia was known to have a soft spot for Pakistan and used to deliver anti-Indian political speeches. India alleged insurgents were allowed to use Bangladesh’s soil to destabilise India’s northeastern states under Zia, especially during her second term from 2001-06.

Zia was sentenced to 17 years in jail in two separate corruption cases for misuse of power in embezzling funds meant for a charity named after her late husband. Her party said the charges were politically motivated to weaken the opposition, but the Hasina government said it did not interfere and the case was a matter for the courts.

Hasina was bitterly criticised by both her opponents and independent critics for sending Zia to jail.

Guardian and agencies