For much of the past year, India and Bangladesh have been attempting to repair a relationship shaken by one of the most consequential political upheavals in South Asia in recent decades. 

Following the collapse of Sheikh Hasina's autocratic government in August 2024 and the subsequent rise of a new political order in Dhaka, both countries have gradually moved from mutual suspicion toward cautious engagement.

Diplomatic contacts have resumed. Official rhetoric has softened. After months of uncertainty, New Delhi and Dhaka appeared to recognize an inescapable reality: geography leaves them little choice but to cooperate.

Yet while diplomats work to rebuild trust, events along the 4,100-km border are increasingly pulling the relationship in the opposite direction.

A growing dispute over alleged 'push-ins' — attempts to force individuals across the border into Bangladesh outside established repatriation procedures — has emerged as the most immediate challenge to the fragile thaw. The issue now threatens to overshadow efforts by both governments to stabilise ties after nearly two years of diplomatic strain.

The controversy intensified this week after West Bengal's new BJP chief minister Suvendu Adhikari claimed that around 4,800 people had already been sent from India to Bangladesh and that another 836 individuals were being held in detention centres near the border awaiting deportation.

Speaking at a BJP programme, Adhikari said Indian authorities had begun removing alleged illegal immigrants who did not qualify under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)."We have started the work of deporting infiltrators who do not fall under the purview of CAA," he was quoted as saying by Indian media.

He further claimed that holding facilities had been established in border districts and indicated that additional deportations would take place in the coming days.The remarks immediately drew attention in Bangladesh, where officials have repeatedly objected to what they describe as unilateral attempts to send people across the frontier without prior verification or diplomatic coordination.

Bangladesh's response was swift but revealing. "There has been zero push-in," Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) spokesperson Lt-Col Abu Hasanat Mohammad Mahmud Azam said on Monday, 8 June. The statement did not deny that attempts had occurred. Rather, it reflected the BGB's position that none had succeeded.

According to Azam, Bangladeshi border guards had foiled approximately 30 push-in attempts within the previous 72 hours alone. While he could not provide an exact number of individuals involved, his comments underscored the scale of the recent activity along the border.

The issue is now expected to dominate discussions at the 57th director general-level conference between the BGB and India's Border Security Force (BSF), which opened in New Delhi on Monday.

Bangladesh's delegation is being led by BGB director-general Maj-Gen Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman Siddiqui, while BSF director-general Praveen Kumar heads the Indian side.

On the eve of the meeting, Bangladesh's home adviser Salahuddin Ahmed signalled that the issue would be raised directly with Indian authorities. "We will, Inshallah, resist all attempts of border push-ins. However, these issues should primarily be resolved through diplomatic discussions," he told reporters in Dhaka.

The dispute goes beyond competing numbers. At its core lies a disagreement over how undocumented migration should be managed between two countries that share one of the world's longest land borders.

Bangladesh has consistently maintained that it does not oppose the repatriation of its citizens if their nationality is properly established. What it rejects is the practice of returning individuals without verification through established bilateral mechanisms.

Dhaka's position is straightforward: if India believes someone is a Bangladeshi national residing illegally in India, that claim should be processed through existing verification channels before any repatriation takes place.

Officials argue that anything else risks creating legal uncertainty, humanitarian complications and disputes over nationality. The issue has become increasingly contentious because of conflicting claims about who is actually being sent toward the border.

Bangladesh has previously alleged that many individuals pushed toward its territory were later identified as Indian citizens. According to Bangladeshi officials, approximately 2,479 people were pushed toward the border between mid-2025 and early 2026, with a significant number subsequently determined not to be Bangladeshi nationals.

India, meanwhile, has emphasised that it continues to use formal mechanisms. Indian authorities have said approximately 2,680 suspected Bangladeshi nationals were referred to Dhaka for nationality verification through established channels.

The widening gap between official procedures and developments on the ground is increasingly becoming a diplomatic problem.

The dispute cannot be separated from domestic politics inside India. For years, concerns over undocumented migration from Bangladesh have been a central theme in the BJP's political messaging, particularly in states bordering Bangladesh. The issue has shaped electoral campaigns, informed policy debates and become intertwined with broader discussions about citizenship and national identity.

Initially, much of that politics revolved around Assam, where the National Register of Citizens became one of the defining political projects of the BJP era. More recently, however, the focus has shifted toward West Bengal, where immigration remains a potent political issue and where the BJP has made significant electoral gains.

That shift matters.

Political success creates political expectations. Having campaigned heavily on promises to address illegal immigration, the BJP faces growing pressure to demonstrate tangible results. For critics in Bangladesh, the recent increase in alleged push-in attempts appears less like routine immigration enforcement and more like an extension of domestic political messaging.

Whether that interpretation is accurate or not, perception increasingly matters. The problem for New Delhi is that border incidents are colliding with larger strategic objectives.

When Sheikh Hasina's government fell in 2024, India lost its closest and most dependable partner in South Asia. For more than a decade, New Delhi had built much of its Bangladesh policy around a single political relationship. The sudden transition left Indian policymakers navigating an unfamiliar and less predictable environment.

The months that followed were marked by diplomatic caution. Political trust declined. Trade slowed. Anti-India sentiment, never entirely absent from Bangladeshi politics, resurfaced with renewed intensity.

The recent improvement in relations emerged not from sentiment but necessity.

India depends on Bangladesh for connectivity to its northeastern states and for regional stability along a strategically sensitive frontier. Bangladesh, meanwhile, relies heavily on India for trade, energy cooperation and access to regional markets.

Neither country can afford prolonged estrangement. Yet every reported push-in incident complicates efforts to rebuild trust.

In Bangladesh, the issue resonates far beyond migration policy. It touches on questions of sovereignty, national dignity and the nature of the bilateral relationship itself. Reports of attempted push-ins reinforce a narrative held by many Bangladeshis that India continues to approach its smaller neighbour from a position of entitlement rather than partnership.

That perception carries consequences.

Bangladesh's political landscape has changed significantly since 2024. The country that emerged after the fall of the Hasina government is more politically pluralistic, more openly nationalistic and increasingly determined to diversify its international relationships.

The BNP-led administration has sought to pursue a more autonomous foreign policy while expanding engagement with China, the United States and other international partners. Although India remains indispensable, Dhaka is no longer willing to define its foreign policy primarily through its relationship with New Delhi.

That reality presents India with a strategic choice. If New Delhi seeks a stable relationship with post-Hasina Bangladesh, it will need to recognise that coercive border practices — whether real or perceived — carry costs that extend far beyond migration management. Every disputed push-in strengthens those within Bangladesh who advocate greater distance from India and reduces the political space available for cooperation.

The irony is that both countries ultimately want the same outcome: a secure border, orderly migration management and a stable bilateral relationship.

Achieving those goals requires more than diplomatic statements. It requires consistency between what governments say across negotiating tables and what happens along the frontier.

The current diplomatic thaw remains tentative and reversible. The border dispute has become its first major test.

If India and Bangladesh fail to resolve the issue through established legal and diplomatic mechanisms, the frontier may once again become the place where broader ambitions for cooperation come undone. For two neighbours bound by geography, economics and security interests, that would represent a setback neither side can afford.

Faisal Mahmud is a Dhaka-based journalist

The shifting geometry of India’s relationship with Bangladesh is only now coming into full focus, following a period where West Bengal’s domestic electoral landscape has effectively rewritten the rules of New Delhi’s eastern strategy. For decades, West Bengal sat uneasily at the intersection of India’s regional ambitions — a site where migration, border security, communal politics, and regional influence converged into a single, volatile equation. The state was never merely another electoral battleground; it was the political hinge upon which India’s management of Dhaka turned.

However, the recent consolidation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state has transformed these regional issues into primary drivers of national foreign policy, making the bilateral relationship inseparable from the ideological currents of the Indian mainland.

Even before the West Bengal election, Narendra Modi’s administration has opted for a departure from bureaucratic orthodoxy, signaling that the era of technocratic management of Dhaka has given way to a more visceral, political form of engagement. The appointment of Dinesh Trivedi as India’s new envoy to Dhaka is the clearest manifestation of this recalibration.

A political heavyweight and former railway minister with long experience inside the turbulence of Bengal politics, Trivedi possesses a quality that India’s recent handling of Bangladesh conspicuously lacked: political weight. While his Gujarati origins are a footnote, his intimate familiarity with the linguistic and communal sensitivities shared across the border is central to his mission. By dispatching a seasoned politician rather than a career diplomat, New Delhi has tacitly admitted that the relationship can no longer be contained within the sterile corridors of the Ministry of External Affairs.

As the veteran scholar Partha S. Ghosh noted in his piece in The Wire, a politician is often better equipped than a career diplomat to understand the communal undercurrents shaping relations. Diplomacy, particularly in South Asia, functions as much through political signaling as through formal negotiation. When relations deteriorate, symbolism acquires strategic value.

Career diplomats are trained to preserve continuity, but political crises rarely reward continuity alone. Once mistrust hardens and domestic narratives begin driving foreign policy, governments seek intermediaries with political instincts rather than bureaucratic polish. New Delhi appears to have concluded that Bangladesh can no longer be managed through institutional diplomacy alone; it requires political handling at a moment when bilateral tensions are shaped by domestic ideological currents.

This shift suggests a quiet recognition in New Delhi that it mishandled the transition following the rise of the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government. Concerned primarily with stability and continuity, New Delhi adopted a posture that often appeared hesitant and strategically tone-deaf.

In Dhaka, that caution was interpreted as aloofness, even suspicion. India underestimated both the interim government’s domestic legitimacy and Bangladesh’s acute sensitivity to perceived condescension from its larger neighbor. This diplomatic vacuum allowed mistrust to harden at precisely the moment when connectivity projects, trade integration, and regional security cooperation required deeper confidence.

In South Asia, diplomacy rarely remains compartmentalised; once political sentiment sours, even technically sound agreements begin to stall under the weight of mutual suspicion. New Delhi’s ever-present rhetoric of “neighbourhood first”, combined with the deployment of a politically connected envoy, indicates an attempt to repair ties that drifted perilously close to strategic complacency.

Bangladesh occupies a critical place in India’s eastern corridor ambitions, linking the northeast to maritime routes and regional supply chains. Instability in relations with Dhaka therefore carries implications extending well beyond diplomacy. However, a stark asymmetry now defines the relationship. While India has pivoted toward political diplomacy, Bangladesh continues to rely on the traditional machinery of the professional foreign service. Its envoy in Delhi, M. Riaz Hamidullah, is an experienced diplomat, but he lacks the political stature and informal influence that Trivedi brings to the table.

This asymmetry increasingly matters because India-Bangladesh relations are no longer driven principally by technocratic consensus. Hamidullah’s difficulties during the interim period exposed the limits of conventional diplomacy in an environment where Indian political rhetoric has hardened.

As the BJP’s internal political ecosystem became the primary driver of policy, Dhaka often appeared reactive rather than strategically influential. Bangladesh found itself responding to developments generated inside India instead of shaping the conversation. The shift is inseparable from the BJP’s own ideological evolution in Bengal.

During the state election campaign, party leaders repeatedly promised to identify “illegal Bangladeshi migrants”, strip them of protections, and, in some cases, send them “back” across the border. While Dhaka once dismissed such talk as routine electoral theater, it now regards the rhetoric as an indication of strategic intent. The quiet tightening of patrols by Bangladesh’s border forces near Benapole in Jashore is a testament to this new reality.

Officially, the move was framed as vigilance against illegal “push-ins” by India’s Border Security Force, but the message was unmistakable: Dhaka now believes migration has ceased to be a domestic talking point and has become an organising principle of bilateral relations.

The anxiety is grounded in geography; West Bengal shares more than 2,200 kilometers of border with Bangladesh, India’s longest frontier. For decades under ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s leadership, India publicly celebrated Bangladesh as a strategic partner while privately complaining about undocumented migration. That balance is now fraying.

The experience of Assam offers Bangladesh an unsettling preview of what may follow. In the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise completed in 2019, roughly 1.9 million residents were excluded from the rolls. Most were not proven foreigners; they were simply unable to produce documentary evidence predating 1971, often because poverty or administrative failure had erased the paper trail.

Applying similar mechanics to West Bengal would produce staggering consequences. Even a modest exclusion rate of 3 per cent could leave nearly three million people effectively stateless. The central question is no longer whether errors will occur, but how the Indian state intends to manage the category of the “doubtful citizen”.

The infrastructure for this type of demographic management already exists, ranging from Foreigners’ Tribunals to detention centers. With a more cooperative political environment in West Bengal, replicating parts of this architecture becomes administratively easier.

Incremental measures could begin with tighter documentation requirements for welfare access and intensified surveillance in border districts. From Dhaka’s perspective, the view across the frontier is one of mounting strategic alarm. Bangladesh fears not merely the humanitarian implications, but the possibility that future citizenship disputes could create sustained diplomatic pressure on Dhaka to absorb populations it does not recognise as its own.

This environment poses a fundamental question for Dhaka: is conventional diplomacy still adequate for managing a relationship increasingly driven by ideology and domestic mobilisation? India has already answered that question by dispatching Trivedi. Dhaka faces a more complicated calculation. Retaining bureaucratic continuity offers a certain strategic restraint, subtly suggesting that India, not Bangladesh, misread the moment.

Diplomacy often operates through calibrated asymmetry; silence itself can become leverage. Yet restraint carries risks. If India is willing to invest political capital in resetting ties, Bangladesh risks diminishing its own influence by responding with administrative caution alone.

A politically empowered envoy in Delhi would possess something increasingly valuable: political access. They would be better positioned to navigate the intersections between BJP politics and bilateral disputes over trade, water sharing, and border management. South Asia remains among the least integrated regions in the world despite obvious economic complementarities.

Bangladesh’s manufacturing rise and India’s ambitions for its eastern corridor create a natural foundation for deeper cooperation, but opportunities of that scale rarely advance through bureaucratic inertia. They require political sponsorship at the highest level and a degree of strategic imagination that technocratic management alone cannot provide.

Ultimately, diplomacy is not about moral vindication; it is about leverage, timing, and the ability to shape outcomes before they harden into structural realities. New Delhi’s reset is evidence that it recognizes it misjudged the political mood in Dhaka. The real question confronting Bangladesh is whether it intends merely to stabilise relations or actively to shape them.

Retaining a career diplomat may provide symbolic satisfaction, but sending a political envoy would signal that Dhaka understands the new logic governing the relationship and intends to compete within it rather than simply react to it.

(Faisal Mahmud is a Dhaka-based journalist. He was the former Minister (Press) of Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi)