Ban on Jamaat by June: Bangladesh minister

By Mizan Rahman/Dhaka

“The government is planning of banning the anti-liberation force Jamaat, but it has no plan to ban other religion-based political parties,” Liberation War Affairs Minister A K M Mozammel Huq said.

The minister was addressing a function organised by the Liberation War Museum at Physical Education Centre of Dhaka University.

In August last year, a High Court bench declared Jamaat’s registration with the election commission illegal.

The military-backed caretaker government introduced the registration system for the political parties in 2008 and a total of 38 political parties, including Jamaat, got registered with the election commission.

The High Court in its verdict last year declared illegal and unconstitutional Jamaat-e-Islami’s registration with the election commission as a political party.

A three-member special bench of Justice M Moazzam Husain, Justice M Enayetur Rahim and Justice Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque, by a majority view, declared illegal and void the registration given to Jamaat-e-Islami by the election commission.

The election commission executed the court verdict after it got the certified copy of the ruling that had declared the registration of Jamaat-e-Islami illegal.

Election commission lawyer Mohsin Rashid told reporters that Jamaat’s registration with the commission stood cancelled after the verdict.

He said after the ruling, Jamaat would not be able to contest the next general elections with its election symbol ‘scales’, Rashid said.

Bangladesh Tariqat Federation secretary general Syed Rezaul Haque Chandpuri, and 24 leaders of the federation, Zaker Party and Sammilita Islami Jote had filed the writ petitions on January 25, 2009 challenging the constitutionality of Jamaat’s registration with the election commission.

Election commission lawyer Rashid argued that the commission had done nothing wrong by giving temporary registration to Jamaat as a political party on conditions that it would amend in six months its constitution removing the provisions inconsistent with the constitution of the Republic and Article 90 (c) of the 1972 order.

After the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971, Jamaat-e-Islami was banned for its activities during the war of independence.

After the bloody changeover in 1975, Jamaat and some other Islamist parties began functioning under the banner of Islamic Democratic League in 1976 and contested the 1979 general elections of 1979 in which six Jamaat nominees were elected members of parliament.

Jamaat was revived as a political party on May 25, 1979 and secured 10 seats in the parliamentary elections in 1986 polling 4.61% votes. In the 1991 general elections, Jamaat vied for 35 constituencies and won 18 constituencies polling 12.13% votes.

The party supported the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in forming the government, and thereby secured two out of 30 seats reserved for women in parliament.

When the opposition waged a movement for caretaker government, the Awami League could enlist support of the Jamaat-e-Islami in the campaign but Jamaat won only three seats in the parliamentary elections of 1996 with 8.61% votes.

Jamaat afterwards formed an alliance with the BNP and secured 17 seats in the 2001 elections with 4.29% votes. As a partner of the alliance, two Jamaat leaders were inducted into the Khaleda Zia’s cabinet.

In the December 29, 2008 elections, Jamaat won only two seats in parliament.

Almost all central leaders including Jamaat chief Matiur Rahman Nizami, arrested for 1971 war crimes, face death sentences in their trial. Another leader Abdul Quader Mollah was executed.