A Secretariat of Its Own: Judicial Independence and the Unfinished Business of Masdar Hossain

30th Sep 2026, author: admin

The promise of 1972 — and of 2000

The Constitution of Bangladesh has always spoken the language of judicial independence. Article 22 directs the State to separate the judiciary from the executive; Article 109 gives the High Court Division superintendence over subordinate courts; Article 116A declares that persons employed in the judicial service shall be independent in the exercise of their functions. The difficulty was never the text. It was the machinery.
In Secretary, Ministry of Finance v Masdar Hossain (2000) 52 DLR (AD) 82, the Appellate Division confronted that machinery directly, holding that the judicial service is a service of the Republic distinct from the executive, and issuing twelve directives — covering a separate Judicial Service Commission, separate service and pay rules, and financial and administrative independence. On the strength of those directives, formal separation of the subordinate judiciary from the executive took effect on 1 November 2007.

The missing institution

Yet one institution central to real administrative independence has never fully materialised: a secretariat of the judiciary’s own. So long as postings, promotions, discipline and budgets of judicial officers run through a ministry of the executive branch, the separation achieved in 2007 remains, in an important sense, incomplete — a point the higher judiciary itself has made with increasing directness. In recent years, and with renewed force since 2024, the establishment of a separate Supreme Court secretariat has moved from academic aspiration to a declared priority of judicial reform, discussed at the highest levels of the judiciary and within the broader reform process.

What a separate secretariat would change

• Transfers and postings of judicial officers decided within the judiciary, on judicial criteria.
• A judicial budget prepared and administered by the judiciary, ending the annual dependence on executive discretion.
• Discipline of judicial officers handled through judicial channels, consistent with Article 116A.
• Institutional memory and administrative expertise accumulating inside the court system itself.

This post will be updated as the institutional position develops. The direction of travel, however, is the story: twenty-five years after Masdar Hossain, its most important directive is finally being treated not as an ideal, but as an agenda.

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