With December approaching and ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s stated plan to return to Bangladesh drawing renewed political attention, Cabinet Secretary Nasimul Ghani has questioned whether anyone in the current administration is waiting for the month before resuming the pace of work.
At an emergency meeting of secretaries yesterday (12 November), Ghani directed ministries and divisions to accelerate administrative activities and send their proposals, along with the relevant summaries, to the Cabinet Division without delay.
An official, who attended the meeting and spoke to The Business Standard requesting anonymity, said that the question of whether anyone was waiting for December was raised during discussions on the pace of administrative work.
The secretaries also discussed whether there was any tendency among anyone within the administration to slow down work, the official said.
The reference to December comes amid renewed political attention surrounding Hasina’s stated intention to return to Bangladesh from India next month.
Hasina, also the president of the Awami League, fled to India in August 2024 after the mass uprising that forced her to resign from power. She was subsequently sentenced to death by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) in November 2025 for various crimes against humanity, including murders, committed during the July Uprising.
In an interview with Reuters back in July this year, Hasina said she and senior AL leaders planned to return to Bangladesh around December and surrender to the courts. The issue has been a widely discussed topic in the country’s political arena, various quarters, and among the general public since then.
Hasina’s December return talk came into the spotlight again on 9 November, when her lawyers sent a letter to the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi and applied for a new Bangladeshi passport and national identity (NID) card for her to facilitate her return from India. The former prime minister herself later confirmed the matter to Indian media as well.
In reaction, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Humaiun Kobir said that the government would not issue Hasina a passport or travel pass to facilitate her return, saying she would be brought back under the existing extradition treaty between Bangladesh and India.
“Sheikh Hasina is a fugitive, a flagged terrorist, and a terror offender. Is she coming on a visit to her in-laws’ home in Rangpur that a passport has to be given to her, and she will come using that passport? We have an extradition treaty with India. This treaty exists to apprehend terrorists and criminals. It does not take a passport to catch a terrorist criminal; it takes judicial process,” he told reporters.
He added that the government did not consider Hasina an ordinary traveller. “We want her handed over. In accordance with the extradition treaty between the governments of Bangladesh and India, this criminal must be handed over.”
Home Affairs Minister Salahuddin Ahmed, responding to questions about Hasina’s possible return, also said that the authenticity and legal basis of her application were being verified by the foreign and law ministries. They were also examining whether the application had been submitted properly and whether Hasina was legally entitled to apply.
He also said the foreign ministry had already sent a letter to India, seeking her return under the bilateral extradition treaty.
Addressing a press briefing the next day, ICT Chief Prosecutor Md Aminul Islam said that there was no legal scope to issue a passport to Hasina, describing her as a convicted fugitive.
He said her death sentence would be enforced upon her return to Bangladesh, as she had not appealed against the verdict and had no further legal opportunity to challenge it.
Explaining the legal position, Aminul cited the Bangladesh Passport Order, 1973, which bars passport authorities from issuing passports to certain convicted individuals.
He also said Hasina’s return could only take place through the formal extradition framework, dismissing claims that she would return voluntarily as political posturing.
Against this backdrop, a secretary, who also attended today’s meeting at the Secretariat and spoke to TBS on condition of anonymity, said the government would address the prevailing political situation through political means.
The cabinet secretary also instructed ministries, divisions, and government agencies to highlight the government’s development activities and various initiatives to the public, particularly their progress and achievements amid prevailing political and economic challenges.
The meeting, chaired by Nasimul Ghani, was called through a notice issued around noon, after the day’s official activities had begun. It began at 2:30pm at the Cabinet Division’s conference room and continued until 4:30pm. Senior secretaries and secretaries from various ministries and divisions attended.
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