A Critical Analysis of the Impacts of Article 7B of the Constitution Over Constitutionalism in Bangladesh

Article 7B of the Constitution of Bangladesh provides protection to all the articles of the first three parts of the Constitution along with some other important portions of it from amendments by way of insertion, modification, substitution, repeal or by any other means. Notably, it provides such protection to the articles belonging to these three parts only, not the parts themselves. As amending the parts means inserting new articles into these parts as well, article 7B cannot prevent such insertions. On top of that, whatever is inserted in these parts, comes automatically under the protection provided by article 7B and thereby becomes unamendable. This can be fatal for constitutionalism in Bangladesh especially if any regime tries to use this gap to insert a new article indemnifying its unconstitutional jobs within a specific extent of time while also declaring that the insertion cannot be questioned before any court of law. Besides, there remains a chance of this turning into a practice over the course of time as well threatening the functionality of the Constitution. Upon these possibilities, this paper tries to critically analyze the possible impacts of article 7B over constitutionalism in Bangladesh. Now, being included in Part I, article 7B provides protection to itself as well. This makes it unamendable until nullifying the entire Fifteenth Amendment which is of less utility, for obvious reasons. Upon it, this paper focuses on the possible ways of countering the bad impacts of article 7B over constitutionalism in Bangladesh in the most feasible way.