Kuddus, who attended the hearing, said the ruling strengthened the original constitutional provision.
The ruling also meant repealing the 16th Constitutional Amendment passed under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government and giving the power to impeach judges to parliament rather than the Supreme Judicial Council, which is made up of judges from the top court.
In January 2014, the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was passed, relaxing the Supreme Judicial Council’s power to remove judges for incompetence or misconduct. But in May 2016, a three-judge Supreme Court panel declared the 16th Amendment unconstitutional, a decision the state challenged in January 2017.
An Appellate Division bench of seven judges, headed by then Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, had upheld the High Court’s verdict in July 2017, declaring the 16th Constitutional Amendment “illegal”. Following the ruling, Hasina’s government filed a petition with the apex court asking it to review its decision, which was confirmed by the apex court’s ruling on Sunday.
The 2017 Supreme Court ruling on the issue put Sinha in apparent conflict with the then government and he was eventually forced to resign while abroad and has remained outside Bangladesh since then. A mass student-led uprising ended Hasina’s nearly 15-year rule and forced her to flee the country on August 5. Four days later, Nobel Prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus assumed the role of chief advisor to the interim government. Since coming to power, the new government has arrested several ministers and leaders from Hasina’s ousted Awami League government.
