New Delhi: India has invited Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman to attend the BRICS summit in New Delhi in September, a Bangladeshi minister said on Thursday, in what could mark the first visit by the BNP leader to India since taking office earlier this year.Speaking to reporters in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shama Obaed Islam said the foreign ministry had received the invitation letter from the Indian side and forwarded it to the Prime Minister’s Office.India is scheduled to host the 18th BRICS summit in New Delhi on September 12-13. Bangladesh is not a BRICS member or partner country, so Rahman’s attendance, if confirmed, would come as a special invitee, a category India has extended to non-member leaders at summits it has hosted before.If confirmed and accepted, Tarique’s participation would provide the first opportunity for a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi since the Bangladesh Nationalist Party returned to power following the parliamentary elections in February.Responding to questions on relations with India, Obaed said Bangladesh wanted “peace and stability” in the region.“As a democratic state with a democratically elected government, we want to see peace and stability in our region,” she said. “We expect India, as a large democratic state and democratic government, will look into their people’s issues and will walk towards a solution.”Obaed did not say whether Bangladesh had accepted the invitation, while India’s Ministry of External Affairs did not immediately confirm that an invitation had been extended.Indian external affairs minister S. Jaishankar earlier posted a photo of himself in an informal three-way conversation with Bangladesh foreign minister Khalil ur Rahman and Sri Lanka’s Vijitha Herath on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum in Manila. No further details of their discussions are known.India had particularly close ties with the previous Awami League government headed by Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in 2024 with a students led mass protests and remains in exile in India. Under the interim government of Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus, relations had deteriorated over Hasina’s presence in India and statements from India over alleged attacks against minorities.Since the BNP-led government assumed office in the parliamentary elections, both capitals have cautiously tried to stabilise relations through diplomatic engagement.Modi telephoned Rahman to congratulate him on his victory, reaffirming India’s commitment to the bilateral relationship and expressing confidence that the two neighbours would continue to work together for peace and prosperity.India followed that outreach by sending Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to Dhaka for Tarique’s swearing-in on February 17. Earlier, external affairs minister had gone to Dhaka in December 2025 to take part in the funeral ceremony of former prime minister Khaleda Zia and met Rahman.Another symbolic act from Delhi was the naming of Dinesh Trivedi, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former union railways minister, as India’s next high commissioner to Dhaka on April 27, becoming the first political appointee to an ambassadorial post in South Asia in more than three decades.Despite the early outreach, the relationship has remained marked by periodic rise in friction.That momentum carried into April, when Bangladesh’s foreign minister Khalilur Rahman travelled to New Delhi, where he held meetings with senior Indian officials as both sides sought to establish channels with the new government.Dhaka pressed for the extradition of Hasina, former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal and others wanted in the killing of Inqilab Moncho spokesperson Sharif Osman Bin Hadi during last year’s protests. India agreed to extradite those accused in Hadi’s case but made no public commitment on Hasina.The issue resurfaced in July, when Hasina told Reuters that she planned to return to Bangladesh around December with senior Awami League colleagues and surrender in court. “They may arrest me on my return, they may even kill me,” she said. Jaiswal responded days later that the request remained “under examination,” the position India has held since April.The state assembly elections had brought fresh strain. Suvendu Adhikari, who led the Bharatiya Janata Party to power in West Bengal, had campaigned on unsubstantiated claims that fifteen million Bangladeshi “infiltrators” were living in the state, while Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma spoke openly of pushing migrants back across the border.Dhaka summoned India’s acting High Commissioner, Pawan Badhe, in protest, and Khalilur Rahman warned Bangladesh would “take whatever steps are required” if pushbacks – or push-ins – continued.It became a major source of continuing friction as Bangladesh claimed to have thwarted multiple attempts by Indian authorities to push people into Bangladeshi territory in June. India claimed that Dhaka was delaying the verification of nationality of identified individuals for deportation.Meanwhile, Rahman visited Malaysia and then China for his first foreign tour.In Beijing, Rahman met President Xi Jinping, and the two sides issued a joint communique in which China pledged support “within its capacity” for the Teesta project and offered to help expedite its feasibility study. Xi also proposed a China-Myanmar-Bangladesh Economic Corridor, an idea China’s ambassador in Dhaka, Yao Wen, said had first been floated more than a decade ago as part of a wider Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar corridor plan that New Delhi had shown no interest in at the time.Asked about the corridor proposal, the Teesta pledge and separate reports that Dhaka was in talks with Beijing to acquire J-10CE fighter jets, external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said India was closely following developments in its neighbourhood and would take appropriate measures as required. On the Teesta project specifically, Jaiswal added that India’s position had already been conveyed to Dhaka and that it would factor all related developments into its approach going forward.The river-sharing relationship itself faces a deadline. The 1996 Ganga Waters Treaty, which governs the sharing of the Ganges’ dry-season flow at the Farakka Barrage, lapses after thirty years in December, and officials from both countries met in Kolkata in March under the India-Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission to begin technical discussions on its renewal, with no agreement yet announced.