Kazi Habibul Awal, a law professor and former secretary, is the new chief of Election Commission

President Md Abdul Hamid has selected Kazi Habibul Awal, a law professor at BRAC University and former senior secretary of defence, to head the next Election Commission.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 26 Feb 2022, 11:46 AM
Updated : 26 Feb 2022, 07:48 PM

The four people Awal will get as election commissioners are former senior secretaries Md Alamgir and Anisur Rahman, retired district and sessions judge Rashida Sultana Emily and retired Brigadier General Ahsan Habib Khan.

The government did not specify a date for their oath in the notice on their appointment on Saturday. The chief justice swore in the last CEC and four commissioners a day after the Cabinet Division had announced their appointment.

Awal was born on Jan 21, 1956 and obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in law from Dhaka University.

He enrolled in the Bangladesh Bar Council as an advocate in 1980 and joined the Dhaka District Bar Association.

Awal qualified for the judicial service after passing the Bangladesh Civil Service (Judicial) Competitive Examination in 1980 and was appointed as an assistant judge in 1981. In 1997, he was promoted to the post of district and sessions judge.

He has worked as secretary to the Bangladesh Law Commission, a chairman of the Labour Court and project director of the Bangladesh Legal and Judicial Capacity Building Project. He has also worked in the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs and was eventually appointed its secretary in 2007.

Awal later held posts as secretary in the Ministry of Religious Affairs in 2010 and in the Ministry of Defence in 2014. He was appointed as a senior secretary to the same ministry in December of that year. He retired in 2015. The government appointed him to the same post on contract and extended it twice to 2017.

He is known more for his stint at the law ministry. A forum of lower court judges in 2009 demanded his removal as the law secretary after he had sent two of them into retirement in a breach of rules. The parliamentary standing committee on the ministry summoned him for his explanation on the matter and he later apologised.

In 2008, the High Court declared his appointment as acting law secretary illegal because the rules were not followed during his promotion. The Supreme Court upheld the verdict in 2010.

Awal’s family hails from Sandwip, but he was born in Cumilla, where his father Kazi Abdul Awal was posted. Abdul Awal, who was a deputy inspector general of prisons during the killing of the four national leaders in Dhaka Central Jail in 1975, was the plaintiff in the Jail Killing case.

THE NEW COMMISSIONERS

Rashida Sultana Emily hails from Sirajganj. She retired as a district judge of Rangpur in 2020. She had worked also in Gaibandha. Emily joined the judicial service in 1985.

Ahsan Habib Khan retired as brigadier general in December 2013. He had worked as director general of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission’s spectrum division on deputation for three years and later as a vice-chairman of the telecoms regulator. Ahsan had also been director general of a BTRC project funded by the World Bank for one year.

Md Alamgir retired as the secretary to the Election Commission in 2021. He was in the news for a dispute over control of the EC with CEC KM Nurul Huda. Mahbub Talukdar, who often made headlines for his dissent, and the three other former election commissioners had once gone up in arms to complain about Alamgir.

The BNP objected when the government made Alamgir EC secretary in May 2019.

New election commissioners (clockwise from top left) Rashida Sultana Emily, Ahsan Habib Khan, Anisur Rahman and Md Alamgir.

Alamgir is from Manikganj. The 1986 batch officer of Bangladesh Civil Service’s administration cadre had worked as the technical and madrasa education secretary. He studied economics at Dhaka University.

Anisur Rahman from Shariatpur retired as energy and mineral resources secretary in 2020. He joined Bangladesh Civil Service’s administration cadre in 1985 after studying geography at Dhaka University.

He had worked as religious affairs secretary for three years from 2017.

FIRST EC UNDER NEW LAW

The president had formed a search committee that nominated 10 candidates for the five posts. The committee submitted the names on Thursday. The final list of the 10 candidates was not published.

The committee, headed by Appellate Division judge Justice Obaidul Hassan, had published an initial list of 322 names proposed by the registered political parties, eminent citizens and individuals.

After the panel submitted its list, Hamid said he hoped it would be possible to form a strong and acceptable Election Commission that would be able to hold free and fair polls at the national and local levels.

The new commission will be in charge of the 12th parliamentary elections.

For a long time, political parties had urged the passing of a constitutional law to govern the formation of the Election Commission.

In the absence of a law, the power to appoint election commissioners was vested in the president in line with the constitution.

The late president Zillur Rahman had formed the Election Commission by selecting a committee to shortlist names of possible candidates for the posts of the election commissioners and their chief.

Hamid had followed suit the next time to appoint CEC KM Nurul Huda and the commissioners from the names recommended by the search committee. Their tenure ended earlier this month.

But, amid political parties’ discussion with the president regarding the formation of the search panel, the cabinet approved a new draft of a law on the formation of the EC. The law was passed in parliament on Jan 27 – a  swift drafting and passage that generated much public discussion.

To be recommended for the post of Election Commissioner, the new law says that an individual must fulfil three requirements: they must be a Bangladeshi citizen, he or she must be at least 50 years old, and they must have at least 20 years of work experience in any important government, judicial, semi-government or private job.

The EC helmed by Huda can claim credit for bringing all the political parties to the 2018 parliamentary polls after the boycott of the 2014 elections by the BNP and its allies. But the 2018 polls were marred by allegations of ballot-box stuffing the night before voting.

The EC was blamed for creating voter apathy after low turnouts in some elections. Local government polls, mostly union council elections, also saw deadly violence during the last commission.  

Huda regretted the violence, but blamed it on the intolerance among parties and their candidates, saying the commission has no control over that.

While similar allegations were levelled at its predecessor, infighting that often played out publicly was unique to the Huda-led commission. Election Commissioner Mahbub Talukdar made the headlines as an outspoken critic of the electoral process and often found himself at loggerheads with Huda.