Bangladesh EC awaits formal interim government notification to scrap Hasina-led Awami League's registration

Dhaka: Bangladesh’s Election Commission (EC) on Sunday said it is awaiting a formal government notification to decide on scrapping the registration of deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League after the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus banned the party's activities under an anti-terrorism law.

"If the gazette is published tomorrow (Monday), we will sit and discuss before deciding on Awami League's registration issue,” Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) AMM Nasir Uddin told reporters.

According to Bangladesh law, if the Awami League's registration with the EC is cancelled, it will be disqualified from contesting the general election, which could be held between December 2025 and June 2026.

The interim government’s Council of Advisers or the Cabinet on Saturday night slapped a ban on “all activities of Awami League”, including in cyberspace, under an anti-terrorism law.

“The official gazette notification will be issued in this regard on the next working day,” Yunus’s office said, describing it as a “statement of the Council of Advisers” or the Cabinet.

The statement said the Council decided that the ban would remain effective until the completion of the “trial of the Awami League and its leaders in Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal in the interest of protecting the country’s security and sovereignty”.

It said the decision was also taken for the security of the leaders and activists of the July 2024 uprising that eventually led to the ousting of the Awami League regime alongside the complainants and witnesses of the trial in the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT).

The meeting, chaired by Yunus, also amended the ICT law, allowing the tribunal to try any political party, its front organisations and affiliated bodies.

Hasina’s 16-year-long Awami League regime was toppled on August 5 last year in a student-led violent mass uprising, prompting the 77-year-old former prime minister to flee to India.

Three days after her ouster, Yunus took charge as the chief adviser of the interim government.

Hasina and many of her party leaders have been facing 100s of cases, including those of mass murder and corruption, since then. Most of her party leaders and ministers in her government have either been arrested or fled abroad.

Formed in 1949, the Awami League led the movement for the autonomy of Bengalis in the then East Pakistan for decades and eventually led the Liberation War in 1971.

Yunus’s press secretary Shafiqul Alam, in a media briefing on Sunday, said the democratic world was unlikely to oppose the interim government's decision to ban “this shameless, killer, anti-democracy and corrupt party”.