With Hasina in exile, a rival family is set to take centre stage in Bangladesh

Bangladeshi politics in turmoil as Sheikh Hasina flees, Khaleda Zia released, and her son poised to take power.

Two women dominated Bangladeshi politics for decades. One was chased into exile. The other is newly free from custody and too sick to rule, but her heir looks set to take power.

Ex-Premier Sheikh Hasina, 76, fled the country by helicopter for neighbouring India this month as huge crowds demanding an end to her rule marched towards her palace.

Hours after the student-led uprising sparked the sudden collapse of her government, her lifelong rival and two-time Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, 79, was released from house arrest for the first time in years.

Members of Ms. Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) endured crackdowns and mass arrests under Ms. Hasina, who pointed to her Opposition’s cosy relations with Islamists as justification.

A caretaker government has run the country since Ms. Hasina’s ouster — but it has to hold new elections eventually, and now that the BNP has emerged from the underground, its members are confident of their prospects.

“People who supported us from behind for a very long time, they are now coming to the front,” Mollik Wasi Tami, a leader of the party’s student wing, said.

Interim leader and Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, 84, has said he has no plans to continue in politics after his current role is finished.