Jamaat gets registration with EC, polls symbol back

The Election Commission yesterday reinstated the registration of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami along with its electoral symbol -- Daripalla (balance scale).

An official gazette notification was issued in this regard, signed by the EC Senior Secretary Akhtar Ahmed.

The notification means the Jamaat can now contest in national elections.

On June 1 of this year, the Appellate Division cleared the way for the Jamaat to get back its party registration and asked the Election Commission to decide on the next steps.

Three days later, the EC announced that it would restore Jamaat's registration and reinstate the "balance scale" as its official electoral symbol.

In December 2016, the Supreme Court decided that the "balance scale" symbol would be reserved exclusively for the judiciary as a symbol of justice.

This led the EC to drop the symbol from the official list through a gazette issued in March 2017.

Jamaat lost the right to contest parliamentary elections after the HC declared its registration with the EC illegal on August 1, 2013, following a writ petition.

Maulana Syed Rezaul Haque Chandpuri, secretary general of the Bangladesh Tariqat Federation, along with 24 others, filed the petition on January 25, 2009, seeking a court order declaring the party's registration illegal.

The EC subsequently scrapped Jamaat's registration in October 2018 ahead of the 11th national election.

Jamaat later filed an appeal with the Appellate Division, challenging the HC verdict. The Appellate Division began hearing the appeal on December 3 last year.

On August 1 last year, four days before its ouster, the Awami League government banned Jamaat and its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, and others through an executive order. The organisations were prohibited under the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2009.

The interim government on August 28 last year lifted the ban on Jamaat, Shibir, and all of Jamaat's affiliated organisations.

Jamaat was first banned in the newly independent Bangladesh in 1972 over their anti-liberation role under a new constitutional provision that banned politics based on religion.

In 1976, the then-military regime repealed the restriction by issuing a martial law proclamation, allowing the formation and functioning of organisations based on religion.