Bangladesh elections: Former PM Sheikh Hasina wins 'landslide' victory

Election official Humayun Kabir said Hasina's alliance won a two-thirds majority in Parliament in Monday's elections after votes in most districts had been tallied.

"This has been a very free and fair election," Kabir said on Channel-i television.

The alliance hailed the "thumping" victory over bitter rival Khaleda Zia.

"Our leader has called for change and the people have responded to her call," party spokesman Nuh Alam Lenin said after the elections, which marked the end of two years of rule by an army-backed caretaker regime.

"They have given a thumping verdict against corruption and criminalisation of the past regime."

Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which won the last election in 2001 by a huge margin, appeared to have won less than 10 per cent of the vote and was quick to raise the issue of electoral fraud.

"There have been a lot of irregularities," BNP spokesman Rizvi Ahmed said.

"Our supporters have been kept from voting, and our polling agents and officials have been barred from performing their duties."

Public celebrations have been banned for two days after the result is announced to prevent any unrest.

Sheikh Hasina and Zia - known as the battling begums - have ruled Bangladesh alternately since 1991, and their bitter personal rivalry has been blamed for paralysing political life in the country.

The caretaker regime made efforts to shake up the system, and went so far as to jail both women for corruption, but agreed to release them to contest the election.

Sheikh Hasina's father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led Bangladesh in its liberation struggle against Pakistan in 1971 and was assassinated in a 1975 military coup.

Although polling was peaceful, there are concerns that the result will see the country slip back into the negative, confrontational politics of the past.

For the moment, newspapers hailed Sheikh Hasina's performance, with the biggest English language daily The Daily Star describing the win as "stunning," and proof that the country was "hungry for change."

Dhaka University political science professor Ataur Rahman said it represented a "huge backlash" against the last BNP government, which had a reputation for rampant corruption.

A UN-funded digital electoral roll, which eliminated 12.7 million fake names, appeared to have put a lid on the widespread vote rigging seen in previous polls, observers said.