‘Bar AL, 10 parties from political activities’

Three members of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement yesterday formally sought High Court orders to bar the Awami League and 10 other parties from conducting political activities and taking part in all future elections.
They filed a writ petition with the court, also seeking to declare the parties “terrorist organisations” for the “indiscriminate killing of citizens, destroying democratic institutions, and unconstitutionally usurping the state of power”. 
In a separate petition, they sought to cancel the results of the three national elections held in 2014, 2018 and 2024 under the AL government.
These polls were held without lawful authority and had no legal effect, the petition said.
It sought a rule asking why the MPs elected from these 11 parties in the three elections would not face sedition charges.
HC directives were sought to cancel the benefits they received from the government, including plots and duty-free vehicles.
Abul Hasnat aka Hasnat Abdullah, convenor of the movement, Sarjis Alam, a key coordinator of the movement now serving as the general secretary of the July Martyr Memorial Foundation, and Hasibul Islam, an assistant coordinator, submitted the writ petitions through their lawyers.
The 10 other political parties mentioned in the petitions are the Jatiya Party (Ershad), Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JSD), Bikalpadhara Bangladesh, Tarikat Federation, the Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB), Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Jatiya Party (Manju), Ganatantri Dal, Marxist–Leninist (Barua), and the Socialist Party of Bangladesh.
The address of JSD mentioned in the petition belongs to ASM Abdur Rab-led JSD. According to the Election Commission, two other political parties with almost similar names are registered with them. They are JSD, led by Hasanul Haq Inu, and Bangladesh JSD.
The petitions mentioned Marxist–Leninist (Barua) as a political party without giving an office address, but no registered political party has such a name.
The petitions did not mention the office address of the Socialist Party of Bangladesh. Bangladesher Samajtantrik Dal (BASAD) use the Socialist Party of Bangladesh as their English name.
Advocate Ahsanul Karim, a lawyer for the petitioners, told The Daily Star that he would move the petitions before the HC bench of Justice Fatema Najib and Justice Sikder Mahmudur Razi for their hearing today.
Karim said he may bring some changes in the prayer portions of the petitions.
Sarjis later told reporters after a meeting with the AB Party in the evening that the movement leaders would appear before the media after the “necessary edit” of the petitions within a day or two.
He clarified they did not seek a ban on the Awami League or cancellation of its registration in the petitions.
“We don’t want to bring any false allegations, a practice which was prevalent in the last 16 years,” he said and added the people of entire Bangladesh will “give testimony in fovour of the petitions”.
The petitions were filed just six days after the interim government on October 23 banned AL’s student front Bangladesh Chhatra League as per the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement’s demand.
The movement on October 22 also demanded that the government declare the three national elections between 2014 and 2024 illegal.
Their other demands included the confiscation of assets of those who were elected MPs in these elections, and legal measures to bar them from participating in future elections.
However, the interim government has so far taken no decision to ban any political party, Chief Adviser’s Deputy Press Secretary Abul Kalam Azad Majumder told yesterday at a press briefing at the Foreign Service Academy, reports BSS.
Only 12 political parties took part in the 2014 elections, boycotted by the BNP-led 20 Party Alliance, CPB and BASAD. LDP was a member of the BNP’s alliance.
All 39 registered parties contested the 2018 elections, but the opposition alleged large-scale ballot-box stuffing the night before election day. The BNP got six seats in the election. Its MPs resigned in December 2022.
The BNP, CPB, LDP, JSD (Rab) and several other political parties boycotted the elections again in January 2024. As many as 28 political parties, mostly small ones, joined the elections.
After the quota reform protests turned into an anti-government movement led by the student platform, Hasina was ousted on August 5.
At least 868 people, as per the health ministry, were killed and thousands injured during the July-August uprising. Hasina fled the country while over a dozen former ministers were arrested.
THE PETITIONS
One of the petitions filed by the movement leaders said over 1,000 individuals were killed, more than 20,000 people sustained critical injured, 400 students lost their eyesight and over 11,000 individuals were illegally detained nationwide during the “July Massacre” spearheaded by AL and its affiliates.
The true extent of the killings and the brutalities perpetrated by the Hasina regime and its collaborators remain obscured due to severe restrictions on the dissemination of information, the petition said.
It alleged hospitals were barred from sharing data, CCTV footage was confiscated, and some victims were buried without identification.
These were done at the behest of the regime, hence the action of the Hasina-led Awami League amounts to terrorism, according to the petition.
Four respondents — the law ministry, home ministry, Election Commission and inspector general of police — are liable to be directed to ban all political activities of the 11 political parties by declaring them terrorist organisations, reads the petition.
The petitioners’ said the AL “evidently exhibited anti-constitutional aims that undermine Bangladesh’s democratic framework, akin to the criteria outlined in German law for banning a political party, and engaged in violently suppressing all political opponents in the country, manipulating electoral processes, eroding judicial independence, and disrupting the democratic order of the nation”.
The AL and its affiliates resorted to “unconstitutional means, including killings, mass arrests, attacks, fictitious lawsuits, enforced disappearances, and murders of their own citizens, demonstrating a disturbing pattern of state-sponsored violence and repression against their own people, which amounts to terrorism and as such ban be imposed on all political activities of these parties and debar them from participating in all upcoming elections”, the petition added.
In another petition, they stated that the AL and its 14-Party Alliance orchestrated the 10th, 11th, and 12th elections held in 2014, 2018 and 2024 under the dictates of Hasina “by manipulating the bureaucratic system, the Election Commission, and police and intelligence agencies which undermined public confidence in the electoral process and violated the constitutional mandate”.
Hasina abolished the caretaker government system “to facilitate electoral manipulation, ultimately leading to rigged elections by committing a fraud upon the constitution in a most illegal manner”, the petition said.
“As such, these elections are liable to be declared to have been done without lawful authority and of no legal effect,” it added.
It also said the MPs elected in these elections received plots in various government projects, imported luxury vehicles duty-free, and other remuneration and grants, despite the “absence of proper elections”.
So, the National Board of Revenue is required to be directed to recover the benefits received by them, the petition said.
The other respondents of this petition are the law ministry, Election Commission, Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha, Bangladesh Road Transport Authority and the 11 political parties.