DHAKA: Bangladesh's Election Commission (EC) Monday formally scrapped the registration of Jamaat-e-Islami, a crucial ally of jailed former prime minister Khaleda Zia's Opposition BNP, five years after the Supreme Court disqualified the fundamentalist party from polls.
"The commission today scrapped the registration of the party on receipt of the full copy of the verdict of the Supreme Court's Appellate Division," an election commission spokesman said.
He said the EC has issued a notification cancelling the Jamaat's registration as a political party.
A high court bench in 2013 declared Jamaat's registration with the EC illegal on a writ petition filed by several Islamic groups, saying the party's ideology was contrary to Bangladesh's Constitution.
The Supreme Court upheld the high court judgment when Jamaat challenged the verdict in the apex court.
The hardline Islamist party, however, is now in a dilapidated state with most of its senior leaders executed in the past five years after being convicted by special tribunals on 1971 war crimes charges.
Jamaat was opposed to Bangladesh's 1971 independence from West Pakistan and its leaders and workers sided with Pakistani troops in carrying out atrocities and genocide in then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
Bangladesh's post-independence government banned Jamaat but the subsequent regimes withdrew the ban allowing the party to re-emerge in politics.
The party became a crucial partner of Zia's BNP-led four-party alliance government in 2001 and its chief Moti-ur-Rahman Nizami and secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujaheed became ministers.
The incumbent Awami League government assuming power after its victory in the 2008 elections and initiated a process to bring to justice the Bengali perpetrators of the 1971 war crimes.
Both Nizami and Mujaheed were sentenced to death along with several other party stalwarts by special courts.