By Mir Lutful Kabir Saadi
Dhaka: Bangladesh’s post-uprising reform experiment has entered a decisive, and delicate, phase. What began as a referendum-endorsed promise to restructure the state has now crystallised into a constitutional confrontation between the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (BJI)–led opposition alliance, and the reform-oriented National Citizen Party (NCP).
At the centre of the dispute lies a question that appears procedural but carries profound political implications: Should newly elected members of the 13th Jatiya Sangsad take only the constitutionally prescribed parliamentary oath, or also swear allegiance to a proposed Constitution Reform Council envisioned under the July National Charter?
The answer may determine not only the trajectory of reform but the balance between popular mandate and constitutional continuity in Bangladesh’s evolving democracy.
Two Oaths, One Legislature
Members of the BJI-led alliance, headed by Dr Shafiqur Rahman, took two separate oaths. First, they were sworn in as members of parliament under the existing constitution. Then, invoking provisions in the July Charter Implementation Order issued by the interim administration, they took a second oath as members of a proposed Constitution Reform Council.
The BNP – having secured 209 seats, comfortably exceeding the two-thirds threshold required for constitutional amendments – declined the second oath. Its MPs confined themselves to the constitutional oath stipulated in the Third Schedule, arguing that no current constitutional article recognises a Reform Council or prescribes an oath for such a body.
The divergence has produced an unprecedented institutional ambiguity: a parliament elected on an explicit reform platform, yet divided over the legal mechanism for operationalising that very mandate.
The Charter and the Referendum
The July National Charter, signed in October 2025 by 24 political parties in the aftermath of the 2024 mass uprising, proposed that the newly elected parliament would simultaneously function as a Constitution Reform Council.
The council was tasked with drafting sweeping amendments aimed at recalibrating executive authority, strengthening checks and balances, and preventing the re-emergence of authoritarian concentration of power.
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A referendum held alongside the 12 January 2026 parliamentary election approved the reform framework, with a nationwide majority voting ‘Yes’. The plebiscite conferred political legitimacy on the Charter’s objectives. Yet legitimacy in principle has now collided with constitutional formality in practice.
BNP’s Constitutionalism: Text Before Transformation
Senior BNP leader Salahuddin Ahmed has defended his party’s stance as a matter of constitutional integrity. From the BNP’s perspective, reform must proceed sequentially:
Amend the constitution through established procedures; Insert the Reform Council into the constitutional text; Administer any additional oath grounded explicitly in constitutional authority. Until such amendments occur, the party contends, a second oath would be legally void and potentially unconstitutional.
This argument reflects a classical constitutionalist position: that the written text remains sovereign until formally altered. Even a referendum, the BNP suggests, cannot temporarily supersede the existing constitutional architecture without following prescribed amendment procedures.
By taking this position, the BNP casts itself as guardian of procedural constitutionalism. Critics, however, argue that this posture risks diluting the transformative momentum generated by the uprising.
NCP’s Counter-Claim: A Mandate Undermined
The National Citizen Party sees the issue differently. Its convener, Nahid Islam, has accused the BNP of “betraying the reform mandate” and misleading voters who endorsed structural change through the referendum. “Without the Constitution Reform Council, this parliament has no transformative value,” he argued at a press conference in Dhaka.
