The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court today deferred for two weeks the hearing on four separate review petitions filed challenging its 2011 verdict scrapping the non-party caretaker government system.

A full bench of the Appellate Division headed by Justice Md Ashfaqul Islam, which was scheduled to hold hearing on the matter today, passed the adjournment order as Chief Justice Syed Refaat Ahmed is on leave, said Mohammad Shishir Manir, a lawyer for Jamaat-e-Islami that filed one the review petitions.

However, the full bench did not fix any date for hearing the review petitions.

BNP, Jamaat-e-Islami, five citizens and Md Mofazzal Hossain, a freedom fighter from Naogaon, lodged the four review petitions with the Appellate Division last year to turn down its 2011 verdict that scrapped the caretaker government system.

The first review petition was lodged by five citizens including Badiul Alam Majumdar, secretary of rights organisation Shushashoner Jonno Nagorik, on August 27 last year, saying that the caretaker government system had been introduced through political consensus of the people and therefore, it has become a basic structure of the constitution, which cannot be scrapped.

The Appellate Division's verdict that had cancelled the 13th amendment of the constitution is self-contradictory as the court in its short verdict said the next two national elections (10th and 11th parliamentary elections) could be held under the caretaker government, but this directive was not mentioned in the full judgement, they said in the petitions.

The four other petitioners are Tofail Ahmed, M Hafizuddin Khan, Md Jobirul Hoque Bhuiyan and Zahrah Rahman.

On October 16 and 23 last year, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and Jamaat Secretary General Miah Golam Parwar respectively submitted two separate review petitions to the Appellate Division seeking restoration of the 13th amendment of the constitution that had introduced the caretaker government system.

In the petitions, they said the national elections held in 2014, 2018 and 2024 had demonstrated that holding any fair election is not possible under any political government.

Filing of the review petitions came in the wake of the student-led uprising that ousted Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government on August 5 last year, leading to her fleeing to India and the subsequent formation of an interim government under Nobel Laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus on August 8 last year.