A petition has been submitted to Bangladesh Bar Council seeking its permission to appoint three Indian lawyers in the review hearing on the Supreme Court verdict that scrapped the 16th Amendment to the constitution.
Ekhlas Uddin Bhuiyan, a lawyer for the writ petitioners who had earlier moved the Supreme Court challenging the constitutional amendment, filed the petition on Monday.
“As the case is important for the people, we have pleaded for appointing three international standard jurists who are also constitution experts,” he said.
As such, permission had been sought for appointing the Indian Supreme Court advocates Ambuj Agarwal, Agarwal Anamika Gupta and Adhimoolam Venkataraman in the review hearing.
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“We have contacted the lawyers, who assured me of help in the hearing,” Ekhlas Uddin Bhuiyan said. “The necessary instructions from the bar council were also sought within 10 days of receiving the petition.”
On September 17, 2014, the House led by the Awami League unanimously passed the 16th amendment, regaining the power available in the 1972 constitution to impeach judges for incapacity or misbehaviour. A gazette notification was published in this regard five days later.
On November 5, 2014, nine lawyers of the apex court challenged the government move at High Court.
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In response to their writ petition, the court issued a rule after primary hearing asking the government to explain why the amendment would not be declared illegal.
The hearing on the rule started on May 21, 2015. Finally, a three-member special bench of the High Court, headed by Justice Moyeeul Islam Chowdhury, declared the constitutional amendment illegal on May 6 the following year.
The government then moved the Appellate Division against the High Court verdict on January 4 this year.
But, the review came unsuccessful as the apex court on July 2 declared the 16th Amendment illegal, causing parliament to lose its power to impeach Supreme Court judges.The article was first published on Bangla Tribune