Constitutional Indemnity and National Politics

Bangladesh is a country which became independent by doing successful exercise of Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Since the independence, the country has been seeing political turmoil from time to time. The Constitution of Bangladesh authorizes the Legislative body to enact law for indemnifying the persons who might have violated fundamental rights of another person or persons, in the event of national liberation struggle or in the process of maintaining public order and peace. The State heads and Parliament had enacted a total of three indemnity laws in the past n Bangladesh. But a question remains that, whether such enactments of indemnity were within the ambit of Article 46 of the Constitution of Bangladesh or not. Another fact which is needed to be checked is whether Article 46 of the Constitution of Bangladesh is corroborative to the spirit of Chapter III of the Constitution of Bangladesh. This research is conducted in a qualitative approach, for finding out the legality of the statutes of indemnity in Bangladesh. The purpose of this paper is to find the validity of the previously enacted indemnity laws of Bangladesh. This paper will also try to find the situation in which or in aftermath of which an indemnity law may be enacted by the Parliament by using the power delegated to it by Article 46 of the Constitution of Bangladesh. This paper will also put focus on the ambiguity of the provision of Article 46 of the Constitution of Bangladesh and will try to address the matter that, may be a scope has been left by Article 46 for enacting indemnity laws by ratifying illegal actions of people.