An Uneasy Neighbourhood: Impact of Bengal Elections on India-Bangladesh Relations

The Bay of Bengal has never been simply water. It is an opera of commerce, travel, and geopolitics. In it, 54 rivers transport not only their rich silt, but centuries-old grievances, and 4,156 kilometres of borders make neighbours into threats to national survival. However, among all the actors shaping this region at present, the most important may be one that did not occur in a military command centre, nor in a diplomatic negotiating room, but at a ballot box in West Bengal.

Illustration by The Geostrata

May 4, 2026, saw the BJP win 206 out of 294 seats in the elections in West Bengal. It marks the end of 15 years of governance by the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal. For India, it marks the fulfilment of a long-standing ambition for eastern consolidation.

However, for Bangladesh, it marks the dawn of a new and awkward geopolitical era. Thus, for the most important bilateral relationship in South Asia, it signifies that the dynamics of the interaction between the two states have changed.

How did this come to pass? Which agreements and institutions now hang in the balance that are imperative for the relations between the two states? And what dangers go completely unreported? Like, what does a World War II-era airbase in northern Bangladesh have to do with a state election in Bengal? And does all of this mean for a region that cannot afford more instability? These are the questions at the heart of this article.

When the Federal Brake is removed, there is a structural shift that nobody talks about.

For over 10 years, the most underreported fact about India-Bangladesh relations was that the Indian state of West Bengal was quietly blocking Indian foreign policy. Mamata Banerjee’s party famously vetoed the Teesta water-sharing treaty in 2011. India had negotiated with Bangladesh at the federal level, only for the Chief Minister of West Bengal to refuse to sign it. Year after year, the treaty sat unsigned. Year after year, Bangladesh waited, and India's credibility as a bilateral partner quietly eroded.

With the BJP in control both at the centre and in West Bengal, India's eastern policy is moving towards becoming more centralised, ideologically cohesive, and administratively decisive. The Teesta deal, which was blocked for fifteen years, potentially will move, and India's Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri has already reaffirmed readiness to advance discussions.

However, the Teesta is no longer merely a water dispute. Bangladesh has reiterated its commitment to the Chinese-backed Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration Project, dredging and embankment works positioned near the Siliguri Corridor, the 22-kilometre strip that is India's only overland land link to its eight north-eastern states. In the space created by India's decade of federal dysfunction, China has already moved in.

Now, the BJP's Bengal win does not just change who governs a state. It changes who controls India's eastern diplomatic posture and removes the fragmentation that Bangladesh had subtly learned to navigate. India now speaks with one voice at one of its most sensitive frontiers. Whether that voice says the substantially important things remains the defining question.

THE BORDER AS BATTLEFIELD AND THE DEPORTATION CRISIS

Importantly, what does a 1975 Memorandum of Understanding have to do with the 2026 elections? The 1975 Joint India-Bangladesh Guidelines for Border Authorities explicitly prohibit the construction of any defence structure within 150 yards of the zero line  (the international border)  by either side.

India does not classify barbed wire fencing as a defence structure, but Bangladesh does. And Bangladesh's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has formally summoned India's High Commissioner in Dhaka, conveying deep concern over what is called "unauthorised" BSF fencing activities at 160 disputed locations along the border, including in Chapainawabganj, Naogaon, and Lalmonirhat, where violent clashes broke out between the Bangladeshi and Indian citizens living near the construction.

Therefore, the BJP's Bengal win means fencing completion, which was long delayed in West Bengal, due to state-level resistance. This can now be accelerated without political friction. For India, this is a new form of strategic consolidation.

The deportation crisis compounds this. Bangladesh's foreign ministry has warned that India's unilateral pushback operations violate the 1975 guidelines, the 2011 Coordinated Border Management Plan, and multiple director general-level understandings between the BSF and Border Guard Bangladesh. In a bilateral relationship already stripped of goodwill, a deportation drive that ensnares Indian citizens is not merely a humanitarian failure. It is a diplomatic liability that Bangladesh's new BNP government is already exploiting at every available forum.

THE DRAGON IN THE DELTA

Every degree of deterioration in India-Bangladesh relations is, in effect, results in a degree of improvement in China-Bangladesh relations. Beijing has read this dynamic with characteristic precision and has moved faster than most Indian analysts have acknowledged.

The most alarming and least reported development is the revival of the Lalmonirhat airbase. The World War II-era facility in northern Bangladesh, which is located barely 20 kilometers from India's border and approximately 135 kilometers from the Siliguri Corridor, is being revived with active Chinese government involvement.

Chinese officials have already conducted inspection visits. The possibility of the airbase becoming a dual-use facility capable of hosting surveillance aircraft or drones has triggered fears in India of a future where Chinese military assets operate just minutes from India's eastern lifeline, which will be capable of monitoring troop movement, tracking logistics, and imposing aerial pressure on the Siliguri Corridor during a conflict.

The Siliguri Corridor handles one million vehicles daily, moves 2,400 metric tonnes of goods, generates INR 142 crore in daily revenue, and hosts vital oil, gas, and electricity infrastructure. Without it, eight north-eastern states are cut off from mainland India. This is not an abstract strategic vulnerability rather, it is a physical chokepoint, and China is now positioning itself to secure it from Bangladesh’s soil.

India's counter has been military. New forward bases at Kishanganj and Chopra in West Bengal. The latter is under a kilometre from the Bangladesh border, which hosts rapid-response units, Para Special Forces, and Rafale-backed air-defence systems. India has also reactivated the Kailashahar airbase in Tripura, a facility that played a decisive role in the 1971 war, as a direct operational counter to Lalmonirhat.

The diplomatic buffer that West Bengal's state-central tensions once inadvertently provided has been removed, and what remains is a hard military posture on a frontier that is growing harder by the month.

Whether this is deterrence or provocation, whether it stabilises the Siliguri theatre or accelerates the very escalation it seeks to prevent is a question that neither New Delhi nor Dhaka can yet answer. In the Bay of Bengal, as in geopolitics at large, the most dangerous waters are not the ones you can see.

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BY RAGHAV GUPTA TEAM GEOSTRATA

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