The 18th BRICS Leaders' Summit, hosted by India at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on 12-13 September 2026, has concluded with leaders formally adopting the New Delhi Declaration. The gathering, themed "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability," drew Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and other leaders of the now 11-member bloc, along with heads of partner organisations such as ASEAN, the African Union and the Eurasian Economic Union. Diplomats had worked through the final hours to bridge differences — notably between Iran and the UAE over West Asian tensions — before the declaration was signed.
New Delhi had invited Tarique Rahman, now Prime Minister of Bangladesh and BNP chairman, to the BRICS outreach session in his capacity as the current chair of BIMSTEC. But Dhaka insisted he had never been invited as Bangladesh's premier, only as BIMSTEC chief — a distinction that became a full-blown diplomatic standoff. Bangladesh's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Humaiun Kobir, told reporters in Dhaka: "How shall we go? Has anyone from the Bangladesh government been invited? Our prime minister was not invited." In the end, Bangladesh sent no official representative to New Delhi at all, even as Dhaka reportedly put over a hundred bilateral agreements with India under review. Bangladesh's envoy later tried to play down the rift, saying Rahman's absence was not a flat rejection and that the two sides had been through "quite a back and forth" for weeks — though he stopped short of explaining why the visit didn't happen.
This is not a small rupture. Rahman's own bilateral visit to India, planned for August 23, had already been postponed for unclear reasons even after Prime Minister Modi personally invited him following his February 2026 swearing-in. His decision to skip BRICS altogether means Dhaka missed a rare platform to raise its concerns directly with a room full of world leaders, and a chance to ease the chill that has settled over India-Bangladesh ties since the 2024 political upheaval.
At the heart of that chill remains Sheikh Hasina. The ousted former premier, who has lived in India since fleeing Dhaka on 5 August 2024 amid an uprising that killed well over a thousand people, has now publicly committed to returning to Bangladesh — she has said December 2026 is her target. She faces a death sentence handed down by a Bangladeshi tribunal for crimes against humanity, and has said she is prepared to surrender in court alongside other exiled Awami League leaders. Dhaka's current government has shown no appetite for leniency: Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed said this year that the "mass murderer" shows no remorse, and officials have made clear they want her repatriated rather than allowed to return on her own terms. New Delhi, for its part, has told Dhaka it will not hand her over unconditionally, even though India is not a signatory to the international refugee conventions.
The domestic backdrop in Bangladesh has also shifted. Khaleda Zia, the veteran BNP leader and Rahman's mother, died in December 2025, closing out what is remembered as the three-decade "Battle of the Begums" between her and Hasina. The BNP went on to win a landslide, two-thirds majority in this year's elections, propelling Rahman to the premiership — while the Awami League itself was barred from contesting.
None of this bodes well for Hasina's planned homecoming. If she does return as promised in December, she will be walking into a Bangladesh governed entirely by her old rivals, with a legal system already primed to enforce her death sentence. Whether her return eases or further inflames India-Bangladesh relations is likely to be the region's defining story in the months ahead — arguably a bigger one, for South Asia, than anything that was signed in New Delhi this week.
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The writer is a far eastern India-based journalist and political commentator
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