EC plans to consider voter number besides population in demarcating constituencies

The Election Commission has prepared the draft of a new law that considers the number of voters beside population for demarcation of the area of a parliamentary constituency.

The new law proposes to spread the seats in a district after finding the average of population and voter number and then dividing it with 'national population quota.'

The existing 'Delimitation of Constituencies Ordinance 1976' will be scrapped once the new "Demarcation of Constituencies Act 2019' is passed.

The EC completed the draft on Wednesday after the initiative was taken to draft it in Bangla.

"We had proposed to have the law in Bangla. To ensure the balance in distributing the seats in all parts of the country, it was proposed that the number of voters beside the population in each area be considered," Election Commissioner Md Rafiqul Islam told bdnews24.com.

"The draft will be sent to the cabinet after the law ministry scrutinises it. It will go to parliament after that. We'll see what happens next."

The proposed draft includes seat distribution based on population quota, balance between city corporations, big cities and rural areas, and determining the constituency in a city based on two thirds of the total population.

The proposed draft had been updated and sent for vetting to the ministry, said EC Secretary Md Alamagir. It was finalised after the ministry cleared it, he added.

The proposed draft does not contain many changes from the previous law, he said. "It has 90 percent similarity with the previous law and only 10 percent addition and modification. It proposes rearrangement of seats considering the population, number of voters, geographic position, communication and administrative units.”
There was an initiative to introduce a new law on delimitation of constituencies prior to the 11th national election but it stalled.

The EC had suggested in its draft workplan to consider the number of voters to determine the demarcation of a parliamentary constituency as the voter list gets updated every year.

It also suggested limiting the seats in big cities and demarcate the constituencies based on area, and keeping the geographic combination, and the Upazilas under the cities unchanged.

No new law was drafted though the government appointed a consultant to rearrange the demarcation of constituencies. The authorities had several meetings on the issue in November.

Once passed in parliament, the proposed law will be followed for demarcation of constituencies in the 12th general election.