By Admin 
Bangladesh’s first woman Prime Minister Khaleda Zia passed away after a long illness. His opposition party Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) confirmed this on Tuesday. 80 year old Khaleda Zia was suffering from liver cirrhosis. According to his doctors, he also had arthritis and diabetes. Apart from this, she was also suffering from heart disease.
Was PM of Bangladesh twice
Khaleda Zia was the Prime Minister of Bangladesh twice. He led the country for the first time from 1991 to 1996 and for the second time from 2001 to 2006. She was the wife of former President and founder of Bangladesh Nationalist Party Ziaur Rahman. His elder son and BNP working president Tariq Rahman was living in London since 2008 and returned to Bangladesh this month. His younger son Arafat Rahman died of a heart attack in 2015.
Khaleda Zia was released from jail on 6 August 2024 amid political turmoil. After this she went to London for better treatment, where after staying for four months she returned to Bangladesh on 6 May.
Important in Bangladesh politics
Bangladesh politics revolved around two leaders for decades. Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina and BNP chief Khaleda Zia. The media named this political rivalry ‘Battle of Begums’. In almost every election held after 1990, power remained either with Sheikh Hasina or Khaleda Zia.
The two leaders had protested together against military rule in the 1980s, but after the restoration of democracy in 1991 and Khaleda Zia becoming Prime Minister, the political conflict between the two deepened.
This is how Khaleda Zia came into politics
Khaleda Zia was born in 1945. He had no family connection with politics. In 1960, she married military officer Ziaur Rehman. During Bangladesh’s struggle for independence in 1971, Ziaur Rahman read out the declaration of independent Bangladesh on the radio. After the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975, political instability increased in the country and Ziaur Rahman became President in 1977. He founded the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. He was assassinated on 30 May 1981 during a military coup in Chittagong.
BNP started disintegrating after the murder of her husband, after which, on the insistence of party leaders, Khaleda Zia took command of the party in 1984. With victory in the first democratic elections held in 1991, she became the first woman Prime Minister of Bangladesh. Khaleda Zia’s death is being seen as the end of an era in Bangladesh politics.