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Student protesters in Bangladesh have called for Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus to be named chief adviser of a new interim government after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country in the face of a popular uprising.

Sheikh Hasina, who governed the country for two decades, was ousted with startling speed on Monday after weeks of violent protests over an unpopular job quota scheme swelled into a youth-led movement that demanded she step down.

The Dhaka Tribune reported that at least 135 people died on Monday as thousands of protesters demanding Sheikh Hasina quit marched on her residence and took control of the streets of Dhaka, the capital.

Army chief Waker-Uz-Zaman said the military would hold talks with President Mohammed Shahabuddin and political party representatives on forming a new government. Shahabuddin also ordered the release of jailed ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia and student protesters.

“We have decided that an interim government will be formed in which internationally renowned Nobel laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus, who has wide acceptability, will be the chief adviser,” Nahid Islam, an organiser of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement, said in a video statement.

“We have spoken to Dr Muhammad Yunus and, at the call of the students and to protect Bangladesh, Dr Muhammad Yunus has decided to take on the responsibility.”

An official from Yunus’s office confirmed that he had accepted the students’ request. 

Yunus, 84, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, is the founder of pioneering microlender Grameen Bank and one of the south Asian country’s most prominent figures. He has faced multiple court cases as part of what his supporters described as a politically motivated vendetta by Sheikh Hasina, who saw him as a potential rival.

On Tuesday, India’s government confirmed that Sheikh Hasina had arrived in Delhi on Monday evening.

“At very short notice, she requested approval to come for the moment to India,” S Jaishankar, India’s external affairs minister, told parliament. “We simultaneously received a request for flight clearance from the Bangladesh authorities. She arrived yesterday evening in Delhi.”

According to some reports, Sheikh Hasina plans to seek refuge in the UK, where her niece, Tulip Siddiq, is an MP with the ruling Labour party and serves as economic secretary to the Treasury.

However, British officials played down the prospect of Sheikh Hasina being welcomed in the UK, noting there was no provision in the country’s immigration rules allowing somebody — even a fleeing prime minister — to travel to the UK to seek asylum or temporary refuge.

Britain’s policy is to urge anyone seeking international protection to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach as the fastest route to safety, said the officials, who requested anonymity.

Sheikh Hasina’s ousting has thrown Bangladesh’s turbulent politics and struggling economy into further disarray. The prime minister, who claimed a fifth term in power this year after a disputed election, had ruled with an increasingly authoritarian hand.

On Monday, as news of Sheikh Hasina’s flight spread, protesters attacked and looted her former residence and other buildings, news footage showed, in scenes that recalled the 2022 uprising in Sri Lanka that overthrew Gotabaya Rajapaksa as president.

People also attacked statues of Sheikh Hasina’s father, independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was the subject of a personality cult promoted by the prime minister and her Awami League party.

The protest movement was sparked by a quota system reserving coveted civil service jobs for specific groups, including descendants of veterans who served in the country’s 1971 civil war in which it split from Pakistan. About 300 people were killed in a crackdown on the demonstrations in the weeks before Sheikh Hasina’s resignation.

“There is a lot of anger and frustration and very high expectations that all of the bad things that have been done will be addressed quickly,” said Badiul Alam Majumdar, activist and secretary of Shujan: Citizens for Good Governance, a non-governmental organisation.

“Violence and taking revenge is not acceptable and that needs to stop,” he added. “We have a new beginning.”

Additional reporting by Jyotsna Singh in New Delhi

Vice President Kamala Harris will hold a rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday to announce her running mate.

This will be Harris’ first visit to Pennsylvania as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, after formerly securing the nomination on Monday. The trip also marks her seventh visit to the commonwealth this year and the 17th since she was sworn in as vice president in 2021.

During the event, Harris will introduce her running mate, although it still remains unclear who that will be. She has reportedly narrowed her choice down to two candidates: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

The Harris campaign is touting enthusiasm in Pennsylvania, saying that more than 33,000 people have signed up to volunteer for the campaign in the commonwealth in just the last 15 days, according to a news release signed by Jack Doyle, Pennsylvania communications director. The campaign has nearly 300 staffers across 36 offices, including in swing counties like Erie, Luzerne, and Northampton. The campaign said it is also working to make inroads in historically Republican areas in Union, Lancaster and York counties.

IT’S OFFICIAL: VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS FORMALLY WINS THE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION

The campaign also said that Harris is “barnstorming” Pennsylvania while former President Trump, her main opponent in November’s election, is “struggling to keep up.” It said Trump’s campaign “lags far behind in the infrastructure needed to win with just three offices in Pennsylvania” and has “shown he doesn’t want these voters.”

Trump survived an assassination at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 and said he would return there for another rally in the future. He held a rally in Harrisburg last week.

The vice president is looking to show a contrast between herself and the former president in Pennsylvania, with her campaign saying she is “fighting for our freedoms, democracy and an economy that provides everyone the opportunity to not just get by, but get ahead” while “Trump’s toxic Project 2025 agenda would take our country backward by enacting a national abortion ban, raising costs for the middle class, and giving Trump virtually unchecked power.”

Project 2025 is a controversial initiative organized by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation that was authored by a number of conservatives, including some former Trump administration officials.

The initiative offers right-wing policy recommendations for Trump should he win the presidency, including replacing civil service employees with Trump loyalists, abolishing the Department of Education, criminalizing pornography, eliminating DEI programs, cutting funding for Medicaid and Medicare, rejecting abortion as health care and infusing the government with Christian values.

Trump has sought to distance himself from the initiative, which has been criticized as being an authoritarian and Christian nationalist plan that would undermine civil liberties, saying he knows nothing about it, that parts of it are “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal” and that its backers are on the “radical right.”

‘NEVER TRUMPERS’ COALESCE BEHIND DEM TICKET IN REPUBLICANS FOR HARRIS CAMPAIGN

Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks during the Women’s Economic Participation in the Industries of the Future meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Week in San Francisco, California, on November 16, 2023. (FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)

This is the first presidential election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, giving states the power to make their own laws on abortion access. The Harris campaign cited polling showing that a majority of Pennsylvania voters support some abortion access.

“Vice President Harris will ensure women have the power to make decisions about their own bodies once again,” her campaign said in a news release. “That contrast will be front and center here” in Pennsylvania.

The Harris campaign also said the Trump administration killed more than 275,000 jobs in Pennsylvania, including thousands of manufacturing jobs, and oversaw record-high unemployment.

It said Harris and President Biden inherited an economy “left in shambles” by Trump but that she helped create more than half a million jobs in Pennsylvania and capped prescription drug costs for millions of Pennsylvania residents on Medicare.

Touting her previous experience as a prosecutor in California, Harris’ campaign said she is committed to keeping communities safe and locking up dangerous crooks, criminals and predators. The campaign said the murder rate in Pennsylvania, particularly Philadelphia, soared during the Trump administration while Harris “has taken on the gun lobby and helped bring a historic drop in violent crime.”

US Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event at Westover High School in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on July 18, 2024.  (ALLISON JOYCE/AFP via Getty Images)

“If Trump gets a second term, he will once again cozy up to the NRA and make it easier for weapons to get into the hands of convicted criminals,” the campaign said in the news release.

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The campaign also highlighted the electoral losses Trump and his endorsed candidates have suffered in Pennsylvania in 2018, 2020 and 2022. The campaign pointed to Trump’s loss to Biden in 2020, as well as Republican Mehmet Oz’s 2022 loss to now-Democrat Sen. John Fetterman and Republican Doug Mastriano’s 2022 loss to now-Democrat Gov. Shapiro.

“Republicans, too, lost ground in every corner of the Commonwealth as reproductive freedom and protecting our democracy were front and center for voters,” the Harris campaign said in the news release. “And reasonable Republicans across the commonwealth continue to reject Trump, with more than 158,000 people voting against Trump in the Pennsylvania Republican primary, nearly two months after Nikki Haley dropped out of the race.”

92 DAYS UNTIL ELECTION DAY

Take a look at important dates and voting deadlines in your state. States vary in when they send out mail ballots and when completed ballots need to be received. Election rules may still be changed by states. This calendar will be updated regularly.