DHAKA: Bangladesh’s new authorities on Wednesday lifted a ban on the Jamaat-e-Islami, imposed in the final days of the rule of now ousted autocrat Sheikh Hasina.

“The government... has cancelled the previous order of August 1, 2024 that banned Bangladesh’s Jamaat e Islami”, the order read. “It will come into effect immediately.” Jamaat-e-Islami, which has millions of supporters, was banned from contesting polls in 2013 after high court judges ruled its charter violated the secular constitution of the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people.

Jamaat was also barred from participating in elections in 2014, 2018 and again in January this year, when 76-year-old Hasina won her fifth term in widely discredited polls without a credible opposition.