Khaleda Zia
Prime Minister of Bangladesh (1991–1996, 2001–2006)
Begum Khaleda Zia (born Khaleda Khanam; 15 August 1946 – 30 December 2025) was a Bangladeshi politician who twice served as prime minister of Bangladesh, from 1991 to 1996 and again from 2001 to 2006. She was the first female prime minister of Bangladesh and the second female prime minister in the Muslim world after Benazir Bhutto. She was the wife of the former president of Bangladesh and army chief, Ziaur Rahman and was first lady from 1977 to 1981. She was the longest serving chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) from 1984 until her death in 2025.
Zia was born into a Bengali Muslim family in 1946 in Jalpaiguri and moved to East Bengal, present-day Bangladesh, in 1950. During the Liberation War of Bangladesh, after her husband joined the Mukti Bahini, she, along with her sons, was detained by the Pakistani Forces. She was the First Lady of Bangladesh from 1977 until her husband's assassination in 1981. Afterwards, Zia became active in politics and became the leader of the BNP in 1984. She and her party played a leading role in the pro-democracy movement against Hussain Muhammad Ershad. They boycotted the 1986 and 1988 general elections, thus securing for her the reputation of an "uncompromising leader".
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Khaleda Zia” is prime Minister of Bangladesh (1991–1996, 2001–2006). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Khaleda, Prime and Minister, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q234814. VIAF identifies the subject as 1607643. The Library of Congress control number is n89262084. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946, 2025, 1991 and 1996.
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This entry incorporates text from “Khaleda Zia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.