Hasina (top), Zia

Dhaka, Feb. 21 (Reuters): Bangladesh will restore secularism as a state principle in the Constitution, a minister said, following a Supreme Court decision to strike down an amendment moved after the 1975 military coup.

The move comes at a time Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is seeking to rein in Islamist parties which have tried to promote a more austere vision of society.

“In the light of the verdict, the secular constitution of 1972 already stands to have been revived,” law minister Shafique Ahmed said late on Saturday.

“Now we don’t have any bar to return to the four state principles of democracy, nationalism, secularism and socialism as had been heralded in the 1972 statute of the state,” he said.

The four principles were enshrined in Bangladesh’s original Constitution formulated by Independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. But the word “secularism” was dropped following the 1975 coup in which the leader was killed along with most of his family members.

Hasina, one of Sheikh Mujib’s two surviving daughters, has sought closure to one of the country’s most difficult periods and fix accountability for those guilty of the coup, since she took power last year.

Last month five men convicted in the 1975 military takeover were executed.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision declaring the fifth amendment, which dropped secularism as a guiding state principle, as null and void.

The Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its staunch ally Jamaat-e-Islami party had appealed against the high court judgment.

Law minister Ahmed said people will be free to practise their faith, but will not be allowed to use religion for political purposes.