New Delhi, July 22 -- Hundreds of thousands of supporters of Bangladesh's largest Islamist party rallied in the capital on Saturday to show their strength before an election expected next year, as the South Asian nation stands at a crossroads after the ouster of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

An interim government headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus said that the next election would be held in April. But his administration didn't rule out a possibility of polls in February, which has been strongly demanded by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its allies.

Jamaat-e-Islami, which had sided with Pakistan during Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971, had said that it would mobilize 1 million people on Saturday.

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