“We are an election-oriented party. We must take part in elections. No one can keep us out of the polls even if they want to. We will join the election,” she told a gathering of Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal in Dhaka on Tuesday.

“It’s not going to happen if you (govt) think you will announce the election after detaining our people. No election like that of 2014 will be held in Bangladesh any more. The elections will be inclusive in this country,” the BNP chief said.

She said no election could be ‘acceptable’ by keeping her party out, claiming it to be the largest one of the country.

“Because the entire world has realised that the election with Hasina in power was not fair and it won’t be,” the former prime minister said.

The BNP sat out of parliament after around two and a half decades by boycotting the Jan 5 2014 elections held with Hasina as prime minister.

The party has been demanding dissolution of parliament and formation of a ‘non-partisan, facilitating’ government before the general elections, a demand the ruling Awami League has refused to entertain.

Khaleda renewed the demand on Tuesday, claiming that Hasina and her party have decided to oversee the elections to perpetuate power.

She added the current government is ‘not elected by the people’.

The BNP chief said everything happens in the country “on Hasina’s orders now and that is why it is going backward”.