Law minister Shafique Ahmed said on Thursday that the world ‘Bismillah’ would remain on top of the constitution even if the Appellate Division upholds the High Court’s judgement that had declared illegal the Fifth Amendment to the constitution.(The New Age BD)

‘Neither will Bismillah be deleted from the constitution nor will one-party rule be restored in the country if the 5th Amendment to the constitution is revoked by upholding the High Court’s verdict,’ he said at a press briefing.

Even if the Fifth Amendment is cancelled by the Appellate Division, the constitution will retain all the four fundamental principles of state policy — democracy, socialism, secularism and nationalism — that were stipulated in the original constitution framed in 1972, the minister explained.

‘The court’s verdict has not mentioned anything about Bismillah…As the constitution begins with a preamble, the world Bismillah will remain there at its top,’ stated Shafique Ahmed.

He alleged that the main opposition in the parliament, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, and its ally, the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, were making misleading statements on the court’s judgement.

Refuting the statement of former law minister Moudud Ahmed that the nation would plunge into anarchy if the 5th Amendment were revoked, Shafique Ahmed said the judgement in this regard was now being used to mislead the nation with self-seeking political motives.

‘I think everyone who upholds the spirit of the liberation war wants the Fifth Amendment to be cancelled. But those who had opposed the liberation war in 1971 and also the 1972 constitution are now raising questions against the High Court’s verdict to mislead the nation,’ he said.

When asked whether the Fourth Amendment, through which one-party rule was enforced, was in accordance with the spirit of the liberation war, Shafique Ahmed, a technocrat minister in Sheikh Hasina’s cabinet, said the basic principles of the constitution were affected to some extent by that amendment.

The High Court, in a judgement in 2005, declared that the Fifth Amendment to the constitution was illegal. The Appellate Division, however, stayed the operation of the verdict on the same day as the BNP-led alliance government filed a petition seeking permission to appeal against the verdict.

Shafique said the government had decided not to appeal against the High Court’s verdict as it had accepted the judgement. ‘The Awami League government wants to run the country in keeping with the ideology of our liberation war.’

On May 4 the Appellate Division allowed the BNP’s secretary-general, Khandakar Delwar Hossain, and three other lawyers to file a petition seeking permission to appeal in four weeks against the High Court’s verdict as the AL-led government had earlier moved the court for withdrawing the government’s petition against the judgement.

The High Court bench of Justice ABM Khairul Haque and Justice ATM Fazley Kabir on August 29, 2005 delivered the verdict declaring illegal and void the Fifth Amendment and the Martial Law Regulations issued between August 15, 1975 and April 1979.

The court delivered the judgement after hearing a writ petition filed over the dispute over an abandoned property, Moon Cinema, in Dhaka.

The court, however, ‘condoned’ the work done for social development, action that is past and done, the orders cancelling the Fourth Amendment to the constitution and other acts that are not unconstitutional.

The court also observed that the usurpation of state power through martial law proclamations, particularly by Khandakar Moshtaque Ahmed, Justice Abu Sadaat Mohammad Sayem and Ziaur Rahman, was unconstitutional.