Gayeshwar Chandra Roy, a standing committee member and key policymaker of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), has been elected as a Member of Parliament for the first time in his 60-year political career. He won the Dhaka-3 constituency in the 13th national election held on February 12, securing 98,785 votes under the BNP’s ‘sheaf of paddy’ symbol. His closest rival, Jamaat-e-Islami candidate Shahinur Islam, received 82,232 votes.

Born in 1951 in Mirzapur, Konda Union of Keraniganj, Roy began his political journey in 1966 at the age of 15 through progressive student politics. He was a member of the Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JSD) in the 1970s and participated in the 1971 Liberation War. Joining the Jatiyatabadi Jubo Dal in 1978, he served as its general secretary from 1987 to 2002 and is now a senior BNP policymaker. He previously served as a technocrat state minister for Environment and Forests and for Fisheries and Livestock from 1991 to 1996.

Roy stated that he never sought party nominations and that his earlier defeats in 2008 and 2018 were due to alleged vote rigging. He emphasized that his goal has always been to be a good politician rather than to seek power.