Jamaat-e-Islami’s quiet election engineering seen as secret trump card ahead of national polls

Staff Correspondent

Dhaka, January 1, 2026: Jamaat-e-Islami is allegedly strengthening its position through a silent and well-organized engineering exercise in the run-up to Bangladesh’s upcoming 13th parliamentary elections. Jamaat aims to win at least 165 seats in the elections to be held on February 12, 2026. A central think tank of the party has been preparing this roadmap since September 2024, which includes strategies such as voter transfer, social media campaigns and taking a soft stance on historically controversial issues.

According to sources, Jamaat has started a specific voter transfer program from December 2024. The seats have been categorized according to their probability of winning: sure win, 80% chance, 60% chance, 50-50 and sure defeat. The voter IDs of supporters from weak seats are being transferred to strategically important seats like Dhaka and Chittagong.

In 12 constituencies in Dhaka, the target is to increase the number of voters from 35,000 to 50,000 in each. Voters are only changing their addresses from their own areas and will arrive at the polling station 3-4 days before the election, for which advance accommodation has been arranged by Jamaat-e-Islami.

It is being claimed that 50-75% of voters from seats where Jamaat-e-Islami is certain to lose have already been transferred to paper ballots.

The idea behind this strategy is that capturing the capital Dhaka will make it easier to form a government. The vote is being balanced by reducing the number of voters in BNP-dominated seats and increasing them in seats that can be shared with alliance partners.

There is a plan to launch a massive attack on social media in the last 15 days of the election. 100-150 influential platforms (Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, etc.) in each district have been taken under control through financial incentives. These will be used to promote Jamaat candidates, spread misinformation about their rivals, and influence undecided voters.

To dispel public objections to the party’s controversial role in the 1971 Liberation War, all Jamaat candidates and top leaders will issue a public apology before the elections. Their message to voters will be:

The current candidates were not in the party then, most of them were children; the current generation should not be held responsible for the past; Jamaat should be given the opportunity to serve the nation.

Although the party’s Ameer Dr. Shafiqur Rahman recently issued a vague apology, it did not mention the specific role of 1971.

Notable among the strategies the party has planned to adopt to dispel fears about Jamaat’s religious ideology among women are:

• If they come to power, there will be no restrictions on women’s clothing, they just have to maintain modesty;
• Women can work in any sector;
• Women will receive equal pay to men based on qualifications and experience.

This is seen as a strategy to make the party’s image acceptable. According to analysts, these tactics could influence the electoral battle, as Jamaat’s public support is growing and it has formed alliances with various Islamic parties. However, such voter transfer may amount to a violation of electoral laws, which should come to the attention of the Election Commission. As the elections approach, this silent engineering by Jamaat is becoming more and more a topic of discussion.