Bangladesh Nationalist Party鈥檚 lawyer Zainul Abedin on Sunday told the Appellate Division that the verdict scrapping the election-time non-party caretaker government system should be declared void, as former chief justice ABM Khairul Haque had signed it after his retirement.
A verdict signed by a judge after his or her retirement cannot be treated as a valid judgment in the eyes of the law, he argued.
Zainul urged the apex court to scrap that verdict and restore the caretaker government system to protect democracy and voters鈥� rights.
A seven-member bench of the Appellate Division, headed by chief justice Syed Refaat Ahmed, adjourned the hearing until Tuesday, when Zainul will place his arguments for the third consecutive day in three appeals, one of which was filed by the BNP, seeking review of the Appellate聽 Division verdict to restore the caretaker government system.
Zainul said that the BNP-led government had introduced the caretaker government provision in the constitution in 1996 through a political consensus to uphold democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and people鈥檚 right to vote.
But, he submitted, the people were deprived of their voting rights when the Awami League regime abolished the system through the 15th amendment in 2011 and created anarchy in the country.
Another BNP lawyer, Ruhul Quddus Kajal, said that the Appellate Division, led by the then chief justice Khairul Haque, by majority decision, had observed in open court on May 10, 2011 that the 10th and 11th parliamentary elections could still be held under a caretaker government.
Kajal pointed out that those observations were omitted when the full text of the verdict was released on September 16, 2012, after Justice Khairul鈥檚 retirement.
Instead, the written judgment stated that only elected lawmakers could form a government, effectively abolishing the caretaker system, he submitted.
Kajal argued that the court鈥檚 open-court observations cannot be changed later without a review petition.
He urged the Appellate Division to review the previous verdict to reinstate the caretaker government provision.
He also noted that minor typographical or punctuation errors 鈥� such as semicolons or incomplete sentences 鈥� could be corrected, but substantive changes to the judgment鈥檚 content could not be made later without filing a review petition over any change.