Parliament passes bill keeping party symbols for only mayor candidates in municipal polls

Parliament has amended the local government election law, allowing only mayoral candidates in municipalities to contest the balloting with party symbols.

Councillor candidates of municipality elections will have to be happy with non-party symbols, as the Local Government (Municipality) (Amendment) Bill-2015 was pushed through by voice vote on Thursday.

The passage of the Bill, tabled by LGRD Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain, has cleared the path to announce the schedule for the municipal elections.

The Election Commission plans to hold the elections to the municipalities in December.

Before the bill was cleared, a few MPs from Jatiya Party and Workers Party and independent ones proposed several changes and sending it to the committee for testing the public opinion. These proposals were overruled in voice vote.

Jatiya Party MP Fakhrul Imam said the provision that the mayor would be from a political party but the panel mayor would be from non-partisan councillors was contradictory.

He claimed the bill violated the Constitution.

Workers Party's Fazle Hossain Badsha said the government has been brave in introducing partisan local polls but weak in creating a difference between the mayor and councillor candidates.

Tipu Sultan said it would create 'chaos'.

Minister Hossain said, "We thought of giving the option to contest the elections with party symbols for now. We will consider your proposals to change the bill in the future."

The Election Commission will now amend the electoral rules and the code of conduct in line with the amended law before announcing polls timeline.

Election Commissioner Abu Hafiz told bdnews24.com it would take time to announce the schedule.

"We will speak about the schedule after the issuance of the gazette on the amended rules," he said.

Some EC officials said they had prepared some drafts.

Considering the rules in relation to allowing time for submitting and withdrawing nominations and running campaign as well, the polls may be held on a day between Dec 27 and 31, the EC officials said.