The Appellate Division on Tuesday started hearing the long-pending appeal against a High Court verdict that had declared valid the thirteenth amendment to the constitution, which provisioned for the non-party, caretaker government system during parliamentary elections.
After a brief hearing, the seven-member Appellate Division, presided over by the chief justice, ABM Khairul Haque, adjourned the hearing till March 7.
About the government’s submission, the attorney general, Mahbubey Alam, told the court that he would make his submission defending the constitution.
Referring to the Appellate Division’s recent decision, which upheld the High Court verdict declaring illegal all military rules and martial law regulations between August 15, 1975 and April 9, 1979, Mahbubey Alam said, ‘We have got chances to rethink our governance system following the fifth amendment verdict. We are being enlightened once again.’
The process to reprint the constitution is under way following the Appellate Division’s verdict, he added.
On February 2, the Appellate Division appointed senior Supreme Court lawyers TH Khan, Rafique-ul Huq, M Amirul Islam, Mahmudul Islam, Rokanuddin Mahmud, Ajmalul Hossain, and Fida M Kamal as amici curiae for their opinions on the appeal.
A special High Court bench of Justice Md Joynul Abedin, Justice Md Awlad Ali and Justice Mirza Hussain Haider, in its verdict delivered on August 4, 2004 declared lawful the thirteenth amendment to the constitution and observed that ‘if democracy is accepted as a basic structure of the constitution,’ the thirteenth amendment did not destroy the basic structure.
The bench delivered the verdict after hearing a writ petition filed by Supreme Court lawyers M Saleem Ullah, who is now dead, Ruhul Quddus, now an additional judge in the High Court, and Abdul Mannan Khan challenging the legality of the thirteenth amendment to the constitution made on March 25, 1996.
The sixth parliament passed a bill incorporating the provision of the ‘non-party caretaker government’ in the constitution for holding free, fair and impartial elections for the members of parliament under the situation when political parties continued their mass movement to pull down the government elected on February 15, 1996 under the supervision of the party in power.
The writ petition was filed on January 25, 2000 saying that the democratic structure of the government is the basic principle of the constitution and people’s elected representatives need to run the administration in every tier of the republic, according to the preamble and Article 8 and 69 of the constitution.
Courtesy of New Age
