Bangladesh’s Supreme Court on Sunday (June 1, 2025) ordered the Election Commission to revive the rightwing Jamaat-e-Islami’s party registration, almost eight months after the interim authorities lifted a ban on it, clearing the way in which for its participation in future elections.
Court officers stated the Supreme Court’s Appellate Division, led by Chief Justice Syed Refaat Ahmed, directed the fee to revive the party’s registration.
The apex courtroom, on the similar time, stated it was as much as the Election Commission (EC) to resolve if Jamaat might contest polls utilizing its conventional “scale” image.
The EC scrapped the registration of Jamaat, which was against Bangladesh’s 1971 independence from Pakistan, in December 2018 in step with a High Court ruling.
In 2013, the Bangladesh Supreme Court cancelled the registration of the Jamaat-e-Islami, ruling that the party is unfit to contest nationwide elections.
Former prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s authorities slapped a complete ban on the party days forward of her ouster on August 5, 2024 in a violent mass motion led by a platform known as Students towards Discrimination (SAD).
Jaamaat and a number of other different events had backed SAD.
After Sheikh Hasina’s ouster, the party appealed for a assessment of the 2013 courtroom order banning it.
“Today concludes the decade-long legal battle. We hope Bangladesh will have a vibrant parliament after this verdict. We hope voters will vote for the Jamaat candidate of their choice now,” certainly one of Jamaat’s main counsels Mohammad Shishir Manir stated.
The verdict boosted Jamaat additional because it got here every week after certainly one of its high leaders of the party and a demise row convict, ATM Azharul Islam, was freed by the identical apex courtroom. Islam had been dealing with expenses of committing crimes towards humanity by siding with the Pakistani troops in the course of the Liberation War.
The interim authorities’s regulation adviser Asif Nazrul had instantly welcomed Islam’s acquittal and stated, “The credit for creating the scope for establishing this justice goes to the July-August (2024) mass movement leadership”.
The interim authorities led by Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus not too long ago disbanded Hasina’s Awami League.
In the absence of the Awami League, its arch-rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by former prime minister Khaleda Zia, has emerged as the primary actor within the nation’s political enviornment, though it has distanced itself from its long-time ally, Jamaat.
Bangladesh beneath Hasina’s premiership in 2009 initiated a authorized course of to attempt collaborators of Pakistani forces in the course of the Liberation War on expenses of crimes towards humanity and genocide within the nation’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD) Following trials, six high Jamaat-e-Islami leaders and one senior BNP determine had been executed after the Supreme Court’s Appellate Division upheld their convictions and sentences handed down by the tribunal.
The tribunal is now set to attempt senior Awami League leaders and authorities officers, together with policemen who served beneath Hasina’s authorities, on equivalent expenses for its crackdown on final 12 months’s violent anti-government protests.
According to a UN rights workplace report, some 1,400 folks had been killed between July 15 and August 15 final 12 months as violence continued even after the autumn of the previous regime.
Published – June 01, 2025 10:25 pm IST
