Deemed Abolished

The watched became the government

On 4 August 2026, Access Now published a letter dated 28 July, signed by eight organisations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch among them, and addressed to Bangladesh's new Prime Minister, Tarique Rahman. One sentence contradicts what the English-language record still says about his country:

"the amended statute continues to preserve the role of the National Telecommunication Monitoring Centre"

The record says the NTMC — the state's central interception agency — was abolished. It was, for 64 days. Then the parliament Rahman's party controls un-abolished it, and dated the un-abolition so that the statute book shows no gap.

The choice of addressee is the point. The letter reminds Rahman that members of his own Bangladesh Nationalist Party — the BNP — were among the surveilled, citing the UN fact-finding report on the July–August 2024 protests: surveillance-enabled abduction, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance. The people the machine watched now command it.

Sixty-four days of abolition

A review the interim government commissioned into the procurement and use of surveillance technology — still unpublished, but read and quoted by The Daily Star — describes what the NTMC became: surveillance "transformed from an exceptional power into a routine practice," and the NTMC could not document who ordered interceptions, when, or on what grounds. Most instructions were verbal.

Ordinance No. 25 of 2026, made under the President's power to legislate while Parliament stands dissolved, commenced on 5 February 2026, seven days before the general election. Its section 97A(2)(d): "any previously existing interception agency or telecommunication monitoring centre or platform shall be deemed abolished" — replaced by a Centre for Information Support under the Ministry of Home Affairs, which "cannot initiate interception independently." "NTMC abolished," ran December's headlines — right about the instrument in front of them.

The un-abolition

Bangladesh voted on 12 February. The BNP took just under half the vote, and Rahman became Prime Minister. Presidential ordinances lapse thirty days after a new Parliament first sits, so the inherited pile had to be dealt with — 31 bills in a single sitting on 9 April. One became Act No. 51 of 2026, gazetted the next day. Section 69 repeals the Ordinance. Section 1(2) deems the Act in force from 5 February 2026 — the Ordinance's own first day.

So the Ordinance was law for 64 days, and the statute book records none of them: the consolidated statute's amendment trail dates 125 provisions to 5 February 2026 and says "Ordinance" nowhere.

The substituted interception section is a fraction of what it replaced — roughly 320 words where the Ordinance had roughly 1,700. The abolition clause is gone, and so is the Centre for Information Support: the statute in force names no monitoring centre and no successor, providing only that "the Government shall designate a central lawful-interception assistance agency." (The Bangla prevails; English renderings are our translation, cross-checked against the government's Unicode text.)

The ban on political spying was not paperwork

An elected chamber revisiting an unelected decree is not a scandal; it is the process working. And much of the Ordinance's 1,700 words never belonged in primary legislation: multi-factor authentication, penetration-test cycles, a three-tier organisational chart. Section 97A(9) provides for rules by gazette notification, the orthodox home for operational detail — and the eight organisations themselves ask for a new purpose-built statute, not the Ordinance restored.

Sort the deletions, though: four of them are nobody's operations manual. "No interception shall be conducted for political, ideological or belief-based reasons, or for the purpose of repression or revenge" is a rights rule. "Accountability" — one of four principles defining lawful interception, beside necessity, proportionality and legality — is a legal standard, and only the other three survived. The requirements that military intelligence obtain the head of government's permission, and that disciplined forces intercepting a civilian get a court's or the Review Council's approval, decide who commands whom. And the Ordinance made unauthorised interception itself an offence, carrying up to five years and Tk 1 crore. The Act creates no such offence.

What the Act kept is section 97C, inserted in 2006 and untouched since: it punishes any person who violates an interception order — three months and Tk 5 lakh rising to three years and Tk 50 lakh, with the court free to advise cancelling the offender's licence. The licence clause says who is meant. The penalty aimed at the state went; the one aimed at the operator who refuses to help stayed.

Eight days after the election, one more year

On 20 February 2026, a Home Ministry letter signed by Deputy Secretary KM Yasir Arafat told the NTMC's director general it could keep operating for one more year, "until necessary rules are formulated." The statute defines "the Government," for interception purposes, as the Ministry of Home Affairs — so the ministry that signed the extension also holds the pen that designates the interception agency. The rules the extension is waiting on could not be found, 118 days after the gazette. The government's law database has no register of subsidiary legislation at all, the Government Press domain does not resolve, and the regulator's English site returns a 404; read that as could not confirm, not as proof none exist.

Tk 95 crore for six data centres

On 20 May 2026, the Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase approved "Expansion of Content Blocking & Filtering System (Phase-1)," to be implemented by the NTMC: Tk 94,90,51,137. It buys equipment for six data centres — The Daily Star's gloss: the firewalls "enable deep packet inspection, allowing the NTMC to read the content of internet traffic," and the packet brokers "collect, decrypt, and distribute" it. The tender was limited on state-security grounds and won by Global Brand PLC of Dhaka; the importer is on the record, the manufacturer is not. And it is Phase-1 of an expansion — the NTMC disclosed in 2019 that it had already installed such a system.

The reformers outran their own review

The letter's sharpest procedural charge is easy to aim at the wrong target. An amendment, it notes, "was also passed and published in the gazette before the committee could submit its recommendations." The committee reported to then Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus on 10 February 2026 — the 11th, by The Daily Star's account. The Ordinance commenced 5 February; the Act came two months later. So the criticism lands on the interim reformers, who gazetted their reform before their own review of the surveillance state could inform it. That report has now sat unpublished for 177 days, spanning both governments.

Still standing, to their credit

The shutdown prohibition survived word for word: no telecommunication service and no internet connection may be "shut down, obstructed or restricted intentionally or with dishonest intent" — a mens rea qualifier that is the interim government's own drafting, not a successor's dilution. Necessity, proportionality and legality survive in the operative test, along with least-intrusive-means, mandatory logs and destruction, and a Review Council in name. And section 97B(2) reaches further than many mature democracies: intelligence-only product is inadmissible as independent evidence unless re-proved by lawful process.

The receipts are on the government's server

Nobody lied. In English, only The Daily Star has covered the reversal, so a correct story about a draft is still the standing answer. The correction is possible at all because Bangladesh's own law database still serves the repealed Ordinance while printing, 125 times, the date the Act says it was always in force. A record that keeps its superseded drafts is what makes an official claim falsifiable.

The rules under section 97A(9) will decide whether the Review Council has members and emergencies have a clock. The NTMC's extension runs out around 20 February 2027. No government response to the letter had surfaced by 6 August — two days after publication, not long enough to characterise one. And if you cite Bangladesh's telecom reform, cite Act No. 51 of 2026, not the December headlines: 127.7 million registered voters live under the amended version, not the reported one.

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References (8 sources)

References

• Bangladesh Telecommunication (Amendment) Act, 2026 (Act No. 51 of 2026) — Bangladesh Gazette, Extraordinary, Friday 10 April 2026, pp. 15843–15886; presidential assent 27 Chaitra 1432 / 10 April 2026; s.1(2) deemed commencement 5 February 2026; s.63 (s.97(2) substituted), s.64 (s.97A substituted), s.65 (s.97B), s.68 (new s.103), s.69 (repeal and savings); signed Barrister Md. Golam Sarwar Bhuiya, Secretary. Gazette PDF hosted by the Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs Division; Act number confirmed against the Division's 2026 Acts index.
• Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulation (Amendment) Ordinance, 2026 (Ordinance No. 25 of 2026), dated 5 February 2026, made under art. 93(1) of the Constitution, repealed by Act No. 51 of 2026 — bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd/act-1618.html and /act-print-1618.html (retrieved 6 August 2026; served as UTF-16BE). Ordinance s.97A(1)(a) (the four principles, with English glosses), s.97A(2)(c)–(d) (the CIS platform; "shall be deemed abolished"), s.32A, s.97(2), s.97C.
• Bangladesh Telecommunication Act, 2001 (Act No. 18 of 2001), consolidated text and amendment footnotes — bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd/act-857.html, /act-print-857.html, /act-details-857.html (retrieved 6 August 2026). Verified in this text: 125 footnotes citing Act No. 51 of 2026; 125 effective-date parentheticals, all reading "effective from 5 February 2026"; zero occurrences of "অধ্যাদেশ" (Ordinance); footnote 166 substituting s.97A by Act 51 s.64 and footnote 167 substituting s.97B by s.65, with no 2026 footnote on s.97C; s.97A(9) (rules by gazette notification) and s.97A(10) ("Government" means the Ministry of Home Affairs); s.97C penalties and the licence-cancellation limb; s.97B(2); footnote 169 and s.102 (Bangla prevails). Word counts computed on the Bangla; all English renderings of statutory text are this desk's own translation.
• Subsidiary legislation searched, and the outcome: bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd exposes no SRO or rules register (/act-857/sro-list.html and /sro_list.php?year=2026 both return a 404 body under HTTP 200; /act-details-857.html lists chapters and sections only); bgpress.gov.bd does not resolve (NXDOMAIN); btrc.gov.bd/en returns 404. Reported as a gap.
• Joint Statement, "Surveillance and Interception in Bangladesh," 28 July 2026 — Access Now, Amnesty International, ARTICLE 19, CIVICUS, Fortify Rights, Human Rights Watch, Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center, Tech Global Institute; addressed to PM Tarique Rahman, cc Home Affairs Minister Salahuddin Ahmed and Law Minister Md. Asaduzzaman. Notes that BNP members were themselves among surveillance targets; cites the UN OHCHR fact-finding report on the July–August 2024 protests (not separately retrieved) and the party's manifesto Bangladesh Before All. PDF hosted at hrw.org (media_2026/08/); text extracted with pdftotext -layout. Released by Access Now 4 August 2026 and by Tech Global Institute.
• The Daily Star, "Govt keeps NTMC for another year," Mahmudul Hasan and Zyma Islam (page carries no publication date; the Home Ministry letter it reports is dated 20 February 2026 and signed by Deputy Secretary KM Yasir Arafat). Also reports the 22 November 2025 meeting chaired by home adviser Jahangir Alam — special assistant Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb arguing against retaining the NTMC, senior officers of police, RAB, BGB and Ansar for keeping or rebuilding it, planning adviser Wahiduddin Mahmud for further review — and quotes the unpublished high-powered committee report ("routine practice"; no documentation of who ordered interceptions, when, or on what grounds; reliance on verbal or informal instructions).
• The Daily Star, "Govt okays Tk 95cr for NTMC's new equipment," 21 May 2026; The Asian Age (exact value Tk 94,90,51,137; Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase, 20 May 2026, chaired by Finance Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury; limited tender, Global Brand PLC selected); The Business Standard, 29 May 2026.
• UNB, "Govt approves draft Bangladesh Telecommunication (amendment) Ordinance," 24 December 2025 (CIS established under s.97A); TechWorldBD, "Bangladesh Bans Internet Shutdowns, Dissolves NTMC" (agency history: established 2008 as the National Monitoring Centre within DGFI headquarters, renamed 2013); Desh Kalnews, "NTMC abolished, new body named CIS…". Dhaka Tribune, "Parliament passes 31 bills related to IG-era ordinances," 9 April 2026 (site returns 403; headline and bill list from search index, corroborated by the Acts index showing Act 51 between Acts 50 and 52).
• Global Brand PLC, About Us — globalbrand.com.bd. 2026 Bangladeshi general election, 12 February 2026 — registered voters 127,711,793, turnout 59.44%, BNP 49.97%.