New Delhi/ Dhaka, Dec 30 (.) Begum Khaleda Zia, Bangladesh’s former prime minister and a controversial figure in the country’s turbulent political life for more than three decades, died on Tuesday after a prolonged illness.

She was 80. Her son Tareque Rahman, who had gone into self-imposed exile to the UK, had returned on Christmas to contest elections and be at her bedside.

Her death was confirmed by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which she led as chairperson. She passed away at 6 am. at Evercare Hospital in Dhaka, where she had been undergoing treatment for the past five weeks. Begum Zia had been admitted to the hospital on November 23 with serious infections affecting her heart and lungs, party officials said.

She was also suffering from pneumonia, and her condition had deteriorated steadily in recent days.

In a statement, the BNP said: “The BNP Chairperson and former Prime Minister, Begum Khaleda Zia, passed away today at 6:00 am, shortly after the Fajr prayers.” The funeral of late Begum Khaleda Zia will be held at Manik Mia Avenue in the capital on Wednesday.

“Khaleda Zia’s namaz-e-janaza may be held on Manik Mia Avenue in the capital tomorrow, Wednesday,” BNP standing committee member Salahuddin Ahmed said as reported by Prothom Alo.

Her death marks the end of an era and is likely to aid her party in its electoral efforts as voter sympathy for the dead leader, whose husband, Gen Zia Ur Rahman, was a freedom fighter and former military ruler of the country, is expected to surge.

Begum Zia served thrice as prime minister, first from 1991 to 1996 and again from 2001 to 2006, becoming the country’s first woman to hold the office through a democratic election. Alongside her long-time rival, Sheikh Hasina, she dominated Bangladesh’s political landscape, their feud shaping the nation’s governance and street politics for decades.

Reacting to her death, former Indian High Commissioner to Dhaka, Riva Ganguly Das, told ., “It’s the end of an era. We have worked with her even when she was in opposition.”

Ambassador Das pointed out that New Delhi had laid out the red carpet for her even when she was in the opposition and visited India.

“Those who say we built relations with only one party are unaware of facts,” she said. Begum Zia’s legacy, however, has her countrymen and women divided.

Speaking of Begum Zia’s rise, Exiled Bangladeshi poet and author Taslima Nasrin told ., “Begum Zia had a meteoric rise from being a simple housewife to becoming Prime Minister for three terms.

“The Begum has a meteoric rise from being a simple housewife to being Prime Minister for three terms. She lacked nothing in her life except for the two years she spent in jail.”

“She banned many of my books, starting with Lajja … Will those bans be overturned now?”

Award-winning author Taslima predicted that her son Tareque Rahman would win the polls. “Will that be good for us? I don’t know. But at least there will be an end to the chaos that we see now in Bangladesh.

Begum Zia, the first woman to hold the office of prime minister in Bangladesh, left behind a country whose political contours she helped define, first as an unlikely symbol of resistance against military rule and later as a central actor in a fiercely adversarial, often unforgiving political arena.

She was not born to politics, nor groomed for it. For much of her early life, she lived in the shadows of her husband, Gen. Ziaur Rahman, the army officer-turned-president who was assassinated in a failed coup in 1981. But it was precisely that violent rupture, his death and the sudden leaderless drift of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) he had founded, that propelled Begum Zia into the public arena.

At the time, few expected her to survive, let alone dominate, the jagged world of Bangladeshi politics. She had no electoral experience and faced deep scepticism from within her own party. Senior BNP leaders, many of them seasoned politicians, doubted her capacity to lead.

The party itself appeared close to disintegration after the removal of the elderly President Justice Abdus Sattar. And looming over everything was the formidable presence of Lt. Gen. H.M. Ershad, who had seized power in a military coup and ruled with an iron hand.

Yet in 1984, defying expectations, Begum Zia assumed the leadership of the BNP. In the streets of Dhaka in the 1980s, she earned a reputation as the “uncompromising leader,” and along with Begum Sheikh Hasina, she refused any accommodation with the Ershad regime.

Both leaders faced their travails at the hands of Ershad. They faced detentions. Their movements were curtailed, and Awami and BNP supporters were harassed.

Her defining moment came in 1990, when, in a rare and historic gesture, she joined hands with her bitter rival Sheikh Hasina, the leader of the Awami League and the daughter of Bangladesh’s founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The alliance was tactical, uneasy and short-lived, but it proved decisive. Together, the two women, who would later dominate and polarise Bangladeshi politics for decades, forced General Ershad from power.

The following year, in the 1991 general election, Begum Zia led the BNP to a surprise victory, becoming Bangladesh’s first female prime minister. She presided over another turning point in the nation’s political evolution, overseeing the restoration of the parliamentary system after years of presidential rule, a constitutional shift intended to place democratic power more firmly in civilian hands.

Her first tenure ended amid political turmoil, but in 1996 she played one of her most consequential, and least celebrated, roles. Faced with violent opposition, boycotts and demands for neutral oversight of elections, Begum Zia navigated a volatile impasse by forming a short-lived sixth parliament. In a move that would shape Bangladesh’s electoral politics for years, her government passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, institutionalising a caretaker government system to oversee elections.

Then, in an act rare in South Asian politics, she dissolved parliament and resigned, choosing to contest the next election under the very neutral authority she had just created. That election brought her rival’s Awami League to power.

Begum Zia returned to office once more in 2001, staging a dramatic comeback. Leading a four-party alliance, she secured a landslide victory, winning a two-thirds majority. Her triumph seemed to validate her most controversial strategic decision: forging an electoral alliance with conservative Islamist parties, including the Jamaat-i-Islami Bangladesh, which had fought for Pakistan and against Bangladesh’s liberation. The move deepened political and ideological fault lines in the country.

Her premiership, in the 21st century, however, was overshadowed by the rise of militant extremism. Groups such as Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Ansar al-Islam Bangladesh gained prominence during this period, unleashing a wave of violence that shook the country. Critics accused her administration of complacency, or worse, alleging patronage from powerful quarters — charges her party consistently denied.

The issue would stain her legacy and provide ammunition to political opponents for years to come. In later life, Begum Zia became as much a symbol of Bangladesh’s bruising political rivalries as of its democratic struggles.

Legal battles, imprisonment, illness, and long periods of political isolation followed. Yet even diminished, she remained an enduring presence — invoked by supporters as a martyr of politics, and by critics as a relic of a confrontational era.

Khaleda Zia leaves behind a Bangladesh still grappling with the questions that defined her life: the balance between compromise and confrontation, the role of opposition in democracy, and the cost of personal sacrifice in public life. . XC/JRC .