Special committee to review caretaker provisions in Bangladesh

Ofiul Hasnat Ruhin

The parliamentary special committee for constitution amendment on Thursday decided to review the provisions for caretaker government.

In its 13^th meeting, the committee discussed about Chapter IIA of the constitution, which deals with caretaker government, and decided that the provisions should be revised to make the system flawless in the light of experiences, said committee insiders.

The meeting sources said most of the members had narrated their experiences of the caretaker government and viewed that the provisions had not been implemented in a proper way.

Most of the members suggested that some provisos could be inserted making it mandatory to hold the national elections in 90 days after dissolution of parliament so that the caretaker government could not be prolonged, the sources said.

'We have narrated our experiences of the past caretaker governments and decided to hold detailed discussions on the issue,' committee member Rashed Khan Menon told New Age.

Menon, a Workers Party lawmaker, also said that the prolonged tenure of the immediate past caretaker government was also discussed in the meeting.

'We pointed out that the immediate past caretaker government had violated the constitution, so we want that the provision should not be violated in future,' another committee member told New Age, adding that some provisos could be inserted in the Article.

Terming a problem the cases of promoting judges to the position of Chief Justice by the government violating seniority in order to make him caretaker chief, the committee also decided to review the issue, meeting sources said.

The committee spokesperson and co-chair Suranjit Sengupta at a briefing said that the committee would not disclose the details of its meeting to the media as per the decision of the members.

'The members think it would not be wise to inform the media about the details of the discussions in the meetings as it could create controversies,' he said, adding that they would only disclose the topic which would be discussed in the meeting.

'A parliament of 11days introduced the caretaker system through a mid-night law and there was controversy about the one-party government,' said the co-chair, adding that they would not go out of the constitutional structure of the caretaker government provision.

The parliament formed the special committee on July 21, 2010 with Syeda Sajeda Chowdhury as chairman and Suranjit Sengupta as co-chairman after the Supreme Court had declared illegal the 5^th Amendment to the constitution.

Read the original story on the daily New Age