DHAKA: Bangladesh high court has rejected a petition sent by secular activists challenging the constitutional provision that recognises Islam as the state religion of the Muslim-majority nation. Bench of Justice Naima Haider, Justice Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque and Justice Ashraful Kamal passed the order saying the petitioners do not have the right to file the writ petition.
15 well-known personalities had filed a public interest litigation challenging the state religion provision, after the passage of the Eighth Amendment Bill on June 7, 1988. Unfortunately, many of the petitioners are now dead. The topic was off the table until August 1 last year, when a Hindu Supreme Court lawyer Samendra Nath Goswami filed another petition with the High Court questioning how Islam could still be acknowledged as the state religion despite revival of “secularism” as the state policy under a 2011 amendment to the Constitution.
Goswami had himself moved the petition which was rejected on September 7 by a bench of Justice Emdadul Haque and Justice Muhammad Khurshid Alam Sarkar, after a brief hearing. Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha formed a new three-member bench on February 29, to hear the 1988 petition after a prayer was submitted on behalf of the petitioners. However, a nationwide strike launched by the country's largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, in protest to the legal move influenced the recent most judgement.
