Md. Imamunur Rahman

Into the fifty-fourth year of the Constitution’s commencement, the mood in Bangladesh is less about celebration and more about its forensic post-mortem.

In the crucible of Bangladesh’s political evolution, the July National Charter 2025 has emerged as a transformative document- one that seeks to fundamentally recalibrate the nation’s democratic architecture.

The seismic events of July-August 2024 plunged Bangladesh into a profound crisis far exceeding a mere political leadership change.

A compelling exchange once took place between Shami Chakrabarti, former president of the UK-based human rights organisation Liberty, and the eminent jurist Lord Thomas Bingham following his lecture on ‘The Rule of Law’.

The Constitution Reform Commission’s recently published report has reignited debate about Bangladesh’s democratic future.

There are some serious debates around the constitutionality of Bangladesh’s interim government. We have seen attempts to justify it both in terms of Hans Kelsen’s Grundnorm theory and the existing Constitution.

Bangladesh’s Constitution has seen its “basic structures” altered by several amendments. Several of those amendments altered the Constitution so drastically that we tend to call them “constitutional dismemberments”– a term borrowed from Professor Richard Albert of the University of Texas at Austin. The Supreme Court of Bangladesh declared some, such as the Fifth and Seventh, constitutional amendments, unconstitutional. Some, such as the Fifteenth, were never formally challenged.