Bangladesh now finds itself at one of the sharpest constitutional crossroads in its post-independence history. The BNP’s landslide victory in the 13th parliamentary election on 12 February 2026, combined with its commanding two-thirds majority, has set the stage for what may become the country’s most consequential exercise of legislative power since 1971. With the Bangladesh Awami League already barred from contesting the election under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2009, and with the National Parliament having passed the Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Bill 2026 on 8 April formally banning the party’s activities, the BNP-led government now stands at the threshold of something Bangladesh’s constitutional order has never truly been tested on: whether a sitting parliament can lawfully outlaw a major political party altogether. The two-thirds majority gives the BNP the arithmetic to amend the Constitution itself, which makes the question not merely academic. At its core, this is a confrontation between the raw power of parliamentary supermajority and the foundational guarantees of the Constitution of Bangladesh, particularly those touching on political freedom, association, and the pluralist character of the republic. Whether the Constitution actually permits such a ban, regardless of the legislative majority behind it, remains the most unsettled and consequential legal question the country has faced in a generation.
The Constitutional Foundation: Freedom of Association
The Constitution of Bangladesh, adopted in 1972, is unambiguous on the question of political rights. Article 38 guarantees every citizen the freedom of association, which includes the right to form, join, and participate in political parties. This is not a minor procedural right. It is a fundamental right, one that sits at the very core of a democratic republic.
However, no fundamental right in any constitutional democracy is absolute. The Constitution itself allows Parliament to impose restrictions on the freedom of association in the interests of public order, morality, and national security. The key word here, and one that courts have consistently emphasized, is “reasonable.” Any restriction must be proportionate, lawful, and not so sweeping as to eliminate the right altogether.
Article 38 of the Constitution of Bangladesh
Every citizen shall have the right to form associations or unions, subject to any reasonable restrictions imposed by law in the interests of morality or public order. This right has long been interpreted to cover the formation of political parties.
Article 7 reinforces the architecture within which any such restriction must operate: the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Any law, including one passed by Parliament, that is inconsistent with the fundamental rights guaranteed under Part III of the Constitution can be declared void by the High Court Division under Article 102. This is the bedrock of judicial review in Bangladesh and it applies equally to a law passed by a simple majority or a two-thirds majority.
Parliament’s Legislative Power and Its Limits
Parliament, known as the Jatiya Sangsad, draws its authority from Article 65 of the Constitution, which vests legislative power in the elected legislature. In principle, Parliament can legislate on almost any subject. It can regulate political parties, impose conditions for their registration, and enact laws that affect their activities. But this power, wide as it is, is not unlimited.
A critical misconception in public debate is that a two-thirds majority in Parliament makes any legislation constitutionally valid or immune from challenge. This is incorrect. A two-thirds majority is required only for constitutional amendments under Article 142. Ordinary legislation, including a law banning a political party, requires only a simple majority and is fully subject to judicial review regardless of how many members voted in its favor. Even a law passed unanimously can be struck down by the courts if it violates fundamental rights.
“A parliamentary majority, however large, does not transform an unconstitutional act into a constitutional one. The rights of minorities and political opponents are precisely what a constitution is designed to protect against the tyranny of the majority.”
The principle consistently applied by South Asian constitutional courts
The basic structure doctrine, which the Bangladesh Supreme Court has recognized in its jurisprudence, adds a further constraint. Even constitutional amendments, which require a two-thirds majority, cannot destroy the basic structure of the Constitution. Democracy, political pluralism, and the rule of law are considered part of that basic structure. A parliamentary act that eliminates a major political party from existence strikes at the very plurality that democracy requires.
The Anti-Terrorism Act 2009: The Executive Route Already Taken
What has already happened in Bangladesh is important to understand before examining what Parliament might now do. The Awami League was not banned by Parliament. It was banned by executive action under the Anti-Terrorism Act 2009, a statute that empowers the government to declare an organization a terrorist entity and prohibit its activities. This is an administrative and statutory mechanism, not a legislative one.
The Anti-Terrorism Act 2009— Key Provision
The Act authorizes the government to proscribe organizations it determines to be engaged in or supportive of terrorist activity. The law was subsequently amended to broaden its scope to cover the banning of organizations more comprehensively. Under this law, the Awami League’s activities were suspended and the Election Commission cancelled its registration, effectively preventing it from contesting the February 2026 election.
The executive ban, and the Bangladesh Parliament’s subsequent passage of the Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Bill 2026 on Wednesday, 8 April 2026, which gives permanent legal force to the existing ban on the activities of the Bangladesh Awami League, are deeply controversial. Senior BNP leaders themselves, when the Awami League was in power, argued that banning political parties through executive orders was dangerous and that such matters should be decided by courts, not governments. That principle does not become less valid simply because the BNP is now the governing party. The argument in favor of judicial oversight of party bans is a constitutional one, not a partisan one.
Precedents Within Bangladesh
Bangladesh does not have a clear precedent of Parliament directly legislating to abolish a major political party. The closest relevant example involves Jamaat-e-Islami. In 2013, the High Court Division of the Supreme Court cancelled Jamaat’s registration as a political party on the grounds that its constitution was inconsistent with the secular and democratic principles of the Bangladeshi Constitution. It was the court, not Parliament, that acted. This precedent is instructive: even when the state sought to restrict a party’s participation in electoral politics, it was judicial authority, not legislative fiat, that provided the mechanism.
The 2025 executive ban on the Awami League represents a different approach, and one that has already faced serious scrutiny. The fact that the ban was imposed under an anti-terrorism statute raises the question of whether the evidentiary threshold required under that law, proof of actual terrorist activity by the organization, was adequately met through a proper legal process, or whether the statute was used as a convenient instrument of political exclusion.
Comparative Constitutional Law: What Democratic Nations Do
A survey of democratic constitutional systems shows a consistent pattern. Countries do ban political parties, but almost always through the courts, not through Parliament. Germany, whose Basic Law was specifically designed to prevent the return of fascism, allows the Federal Constitutional Court to dissolve parties that seek to undermine the free democratic basic order. Turkey’s Constitutional Court has dissolved numerous parties over the decades. In India, no political party has ever been banned by Parliament. The pattern across democracies is unmistakable: the decision to dissolve a political party is treated as a judicial function, not a legislative one, precisely because Parliament itself is a political institution with an obvious interest in the outcome.
When Parliament bans an opposition party, it is, in the plainest sense, a party in power using its legislative majority to remove its principal competitor from the political arena. This structural conflict of interest is exactly why constitutional democracies have entrusted this power to independent courts rather than elected legislatures.
A Ban That Breaks International Law
In May 2025, the Interim Government of Bangladesh, led by Muhammad Yunus, banned the Awami League under the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2009. What makes this particularly troubling is that the provision used to impose the ban was never part of the original legislation. It was inserted through an ordinance issued by the Interim Government itself and later ratified by a BNP-dominated parliament. This is not due process. This is a government rewriting its own rules to eliminate its most significant political rival.
International law does not categorically prohibit banning political parties, but the threshold is extraordinarily high. Under frameworks established by the European Court of Human Rights, a ban is only permissible when a party poses a real and imminent threat to democracy, backed by compelling evidence, and only as a last resort after less restrictive measures have been genuinely considered. The Awami League ban meets none of these conditions. It was imposed before any judicial determination of wrongdoing, effectively punishing millions of supporters for crimes never proven in a court of law. International law is clear: individuals must be prosecuted, not entire political organizations collectively punished.
The political motivations cannot be ignored either. The ban gained momentum following pressure from Jamaat-e-Islami and the NCP. The February 2026 electoral results confirmed what many feared: excluding the Awami League created an uncontested landscape that directly benefited Islamist and right-wing parties. The ban did not protect democracy. It dismantled it, and the consequences for Bangladesh’s secular political future are deeply alarming.
The Legal Risks of a Parliamentary Ban
If the BNP government proceeds to enact legislation formally banning the Awami League through Parliament, it will face immediate and formidable legal challenges on multiple grounds. First, such a law would directly engage Article 38 and require the courts to assess whether the restriction imposed is reasonable and proportionate. Banning a party that has governed Bangladesh for decades and commands the loyalty of tens of millions of citizens is about as far from proportionate as any restriction can be.
Second, the law would be challenged on grounds of due process. The Awami League and its members would have a strong argument that they were never given a fair opportunity to contest the allegations against them before an independent judicial body. Third, the basic structure doctrine would be invoked, with petitioners arguing that permanently eliminating a major political party destroys the democratic pluralism that is foundational to the Bangladeshi constitutional order. A High Court writ petition would be filed almost immediately, and the matter would very likely reach the Appellate Division.
Bangladesh’s Move to Ban Awami League Is Not Justice, It Is Authoritarianism:
In the contemporary world, banning a political party is something one would rarely, if ever, witness in a functioning democracy. Democratic states are built on the foundational principle that people hold the sovereign right to choose their representatives and political parties through free and fair elections. It is precisely this electoral freedom that separates democracy from authoritarianism. What Bangladesh is now contemplating, banning the Awami League, the country’s most historically significant and influential political party, is not just a dramatic departure from democratic norms but an outright contradiction of them. In a democracy, the ballot box is the mechanism through which parties are accepted or rejected by the people, not state bans or legal prohibitions. To silence a political force through institutional coercion, regardless of the justifications offered, is the language of authoritarian regimes, not democratic republics. If Bangladesh proceeds with this move, it will not merely be making history; it will be setting a deeply troubling precedent that fundamentally undermines the democratic values the country aspires to uphold.
Banned Again and Again, But Never Broken
History has a funny way of proving tyrants wrong. The Awami League is no stranger to bans, bullets, and brute force. In 1958, when General Iskander Mirza clamped down martial law on Pakistan, the All-Pakistan Awami League was among the first casualties, dissolved by a stroke of authoritarian pen. Then came the darkest night of all, 26 March 1971, when the Pakistani military launched Operation Searchlight, a brutal crackdown on the people of East Pakistan, banning the party once again and trying to silence its voice forever. But you cannot ban an idea whose time has come. The Awami League did not wither, it fought. It led an entire nation through nine months of blood and fire, and when the smoke cleared, something extraordinary stood in its place — not just a surviving political party, but a brand new country. Bangladesh was born, and the Awami League had midwifed it into existence. Every attempt to bury this party only seemed to make it more determined, more rooted in the hearts of the people it represented. That is the paradox its opponents never quite grasped, the more you try to erase a movement built on the aspirations of millions, the larger it grows.
Jamaat and Islamist Forces Will Be the Real Beneficiaries
Who truly gains from the banning of the Awami League? That is perhaps the most important question nobody is asking loudly enough. The Awami League is not just a political party, it is the backbone of secular, progressive politics in Bangladesh. Remove it from the equation, and Bangladesh does not get a healthier democracy, Bangladesh gets a dangerous vacuum. In the absence of Awami League, the mainstream secular political forces will effectively disappear from the national stage, leaving the field wide open for Islamist parties and extremist groups to march in and fill that space. These forces have long been waiting for exactly this moment. Without a strong secular counterweight, Islamist outfits will not just grow, they will dominate, shaping the political narrative, the street power, and eventually the direction of the state itself. And what about BNP? The uncomfortable truth is that BNP simply does not have the ideological spine or the mass base to stand up to this rising tide of Islamist influence. It has neither the credibility nor the courage to confront forces it has spent decades quietly accommodating. Banning the Awami League, therefore, is not a blow against one party. It is a blow against secularism itself, and the ultimate winners will not be the people of Bangladesh, they will be the very forces that have always dreamed of turning this country into something its founders never intended it to be.
Ban the Awami League Today, Lose Bangladesh to Islamism Tomorrow:
The consequences of banning the Awami League from Bangladesh’s political landscape could be catastrophic, and the warning signs are already visible. Since the regime change on August 5, 2024, the rise of Islamist fundamentalism in Bangladesh has become increasingly difficult to ignore. Jamaat e Islami and its Islamist allies have emerged as one of the most powerful and organized political forces in the country today. In the absence of the Awami League, which has historically been the most significant secular and progressive counterweight to religious extremism in Bangladesh, the political vacuum will inevitably be filled by these forces. The BNP, for all its political standing, has neither the ideological conviction nor the organizational strength to resist the growing influence of Jamaat and other hardline Islamist groups. A Bangladesh without the Awami League in its political arena is a Bangladesh that is dangerously exposed to theocratic capture. The international community must understand what is at stake here. Banning the Awami League is not simply a domestic political decision; it is a move that could push an entire nation towards the kind of religious authoritarianism the world has already witnessed in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Bangladesh stands at a crossroads, and the path being chosen right now could define the country’s identity for generations to come.
Parvez Hashem, Lawyer and Human Rights Defender
