Parliament has given the greenlight to the Delimitation of Constituencies Bill 2021, enabling the Election Commission (EC) to make new electoral rules under the constitution.
The bill was presented by Law Minister Anisul Huq and passed by a voice vote on Saturday, reports bdnews24.com.
On Jul 3, the draft was sent to the parliamentary standing committee for scrutiny after it was placed before the house by Huq.
The draft was designed to have the law published in Bangla instead of the existing Delimitation of Constituencies Ordinance 1976, which was promulgated during the military regime of Ziaur Rahman.
However, the EC’s proposal to amend the Delimitation of Constituencies Ordinance was not approved. The existing 'Delimitation of Constituencies Ordinance 1976' will be scrapped once the new law comes into effect.
The legislation will have nine sections instead of eight in the existing one. The new section will enable the Election Commission to formulate rules under the law.
As per the bill, the Election Commission shall divide the country into as many single territorial constituencies as the number of members to be elected to parliament as per the constitution.
The law seeks to maintain geographical integrity and requires the demarcation of constituencies to be as realistic as possible on the basis of the census.
The new law will smooth the way to carry out the demarcation of single territorial constituencies, Huq said.
“The draft added a subsection to the section 8 of the existing law that said, the election will be held in line with the existing area of a parliamentary constituency if demarcation is not possible due to misfortune or any other reason.”
The commission, led by its chief Nurul Huda, took the initiative to reform the existing law.
There was an initiative to introduce a new law on the delimitation of constituencies prior to the 11th national election but it stalled.
The EC had suggested in its draft work-plan 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.