New Delhi: Bangladesh will conduct a referendum on its ‘July National Charter’ that proposes further checks on power among other measures on the same day as the general election scheduled for the first half of February, Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus announced on Thursday (November 13).

The referendum will require Bangladeshis to consider four proposals pertaining to the charter's implementation and answer a single yes or no question.

If a majority votes ‘yes’, a ‘constitution reform council’ will be formed comprising elected MPs, whose mandate will be to amend the Bangladeshi constitution within 180 working days of the date of their first sitting, Yunus explained.

Within 30 working days of that a new upper house of the Bangladeshi parliament whose composition will be determined by the proportion of votes won in the general election must be formed.

Yunus's announcement has elicited a mixed response from Bangladeshi political parties.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) reportedly ‘thanked’ Yunus for his announcement, while the Jamaat-e-Islami came out against Dhaka's decision to hold the referendum along with the election. The student-led National Citizen Party said it did not object to the timing of the vote.

Meanwhile, the currently banned Awami League party of ousted premier Sheikh Hasina, which did not participate in negotiations over the charter that was finalised last month, called a bandh on Thursday to protest the trial of its leader by the Dhaka-based International Crimes Tribunal for her alleged role in ordering violent crackdowns on the anti-government protests of July and August last year.

Following a meeting of his council of advisers – the equivalent of an interim cabinet – Yunus announced the timing of the referendum and the questions it is to contain.

Per the state-run BSS news agency, the referendum will ask citizens whether they agree to the July National Charter (Constitutional Reform) Implementation Order, 2025 – which President Mohammed Shahabuddin issued on Thursday after it was approved the council and signed by Yunus – and the following four proposals to reform the constitution as laid out in the charter:

1. During election time a caretaker government, an election commission and other constitutional bodies shall be formed in line with the procedures laid out in the charter.
2. Bangladesh's next parliament will be bicameral, with a 100-member upper house whose composition will be determined by the proportion of votes won in the general election. All constitutional amendments will require a majority vote in the upper house.
3. The election's winners must implement the 30 proposals in the charter that were agreed upon by participating political parties, including increasing women's representation in parliament, electing deputy speakers and parliamentary committee chairs from among the opposition, imposing a term limit for prime ministers, expanding the president's powers, broadening fundamental rights and enabling an independent judiciary.
4. Other reforms contained in the charter will be implemented “as per the commitments made by the political parties”.

The Prothom Alo newspaper reported that the BNP “thanked” Yunus for his announcement.

“The BNP standing committee … thanked the chief adviser for reaffirming that the national election will be held in the first half of February and for announcing that a referendum will be held on the same day in his address to the nation,” party secretary-general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir was quoted as saying.

However, Salahuddin Ahmed, a leader in the BNP's standing committee, was earlier quoted as criticising the announcement on a number of grounds, including that a ‘constitution reform council’ was allegedly not discussed during the talks over the charter.

The Jamaat said that the decision to hold the “national election and referendum on the same day has not been acceptable to the nation and the public demand has not been met”.

The announcement, the party was quoted as saying by the Dhaka Business Standard, “has plunged the country into further crisis”. “In every national election in Bangladesh's history, voting in some centres has been suspended or marred by violence. If a referendum is held on the same day, the closure of any polling centre would affect both the election and the referendum,” Jamaat secretary-general Mia Golam Porwar said.

The National Citizen Party that is led by students who spearheaded the protests that toppled Hasina in August last year – and which had boycotted the talks over the charter – said it did not oppose the timing of the referendum but that it objected to the fact that the president signed the implementation order as opposed to Yunus, reported the Daily Star.

The newspaper also noted that the implementation order did not include a provision holding that the charter's reform provisions would automatically be incorporated into the constitution if the reform council failed to meet its 180-day deadline.

This omission, Dhaka University political science professor Sabbir Ahmed told the Business Standard, leaves it unclear what will happen if the council indeed misses its deadline. “If it's not implemented within the stipulated timeframe, the chances of execution will diminish,” he was quoted as saying.

The July National Charter was signed by 24 parties on October 17, including the BNP and the Jamaat but excluding the National Citizen Party, after talks between 30 parties and the National Consensus Commission.

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