The 84-year-old microfinance pioneer is leading a temporary administration to tackle what he has called the "extremely tough" challenge of restoring democratic institutions in the South Asian nation of some 170 million people.

 

"Election dates could be fixed by the end of 2025 or the first half of 2026," he said in a broadcast on state television.

 

Hasina, 77, fled by helicopter to neighbouring India as thousands of protesters stormed the prime minister's palace in Dhaka.

 

Her government was also accused of politicising courts and the civil service, as well as staging lopsided elections, to dismantle democratic checks on its power.

 

Hasina's 15-year rule saw widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents.

 

Yunus has launched commissions to oversee a raft of reforms he says are needed and setting an election date depends on what political parties agree.

 

"Throughout, I have emphasised that reforms should take place first before the arrangements for an election," he said.

 

"If the political parties agree to hold the election on an earlier date with minimum reforms, such as having a flawless voter list, the election could be held by the end of November," he added.

 

But including the full list of electoral reforms would delay polls by a few months, he said.

 

Meanwhile, a Bangladesh commission probing abuses during the rule of toppled leader Sheikh Hasina has recommended a much-feared armed police unit be disbanded, a senior inquiry member said Sunday.

 

Hasina, 77, fled by helicopter to neighboring India on August 5 as a student-led uprising stormed the prime minister’s palace in Dhaka.

 

Her government was accused of widespread human rights abuses, including the extrajudicial killing of hundreds of political opponents and the unlawful abduction and disappearance of hundreds more.

 

The Commission of Inquiry into Enforced Disappearances, set up by the caretaker government, said it found initial evidence that Hasina and other ex-senior officials were involved in the enforced disappearances alleged to have been carried out by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB).

 

The RAB paramilitary police force was sanctioned by the United States in 2021, alongside seven of its senior officers, in response to reports of its culpability in some of the worst rights abuses committed during Hasina’s 15-year-long rule.

 

“RAB has never abided by the law and was seldom held accountable for its atrocities, which include enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and abductions,” Nur Khan Liton, a member of the commission, told AFP.

 

The commission handed its preliminary report to the leader of the interim government Muhammad Yunus late Saturday.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), one of the country’s largest political parties, also called for RAB’s abolition.

 

Senior BNP leader M. Hafizuddin Ahmed told reporters that the force was too rotten to be reformed.

 

“When a patient suffers from gangrene, according to medical studies, the only solution is to amputate the affected organ,” he said.

 

The elite police unit was launched in 2004, billed as a way to provide rapid results in a country where the judicial system was notoriously slow.

 

But the unit earned a grim reputation for extrajudicial killings and was accused of supporting Hasina’s political ambitions by suppressing dissent through abductions and murders.