February 8, 2023
DHAKA – The Election Commission yesterday said it would publish the draft of delimitation of constituencies next week.
“The draft will be prepared taking into consideration the boundaries of constituencies drawn before the 11th parliamentary polls,” EC Secretary Jahangir Alam told reporters after a meeting of election commissioners.
Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal presided over the meeting at the EC office.
Jahangir said anyone can file an appeal against an EC decision after a preliminary list of redrawn constituencies is published. “These objections will be settled before finalising the delimitation.”
According to the delimitation law, boundaries of Jatiya Sangsad constituencies should be redrawn considering administrative convenience, keeping each constituency intact geographically, and population be distributed as per the final census report.
EC officials said they would primarily use the population data of 2011 census and finally use the population data of the latest census report if they have the report.
An EC official said an official of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics informed the commission that they would be able to provide the population data soon.
Demarcation of seats, a complicated and technical job that sometimes creates controversies, takes a good amount of time, said EC officials.
In the process, some constituencies become larger and some other smaller. This means some MP candidates in the next parliamentary election will have to woo new voters in their constituencies, while some other would lose voters in their strongholds.
According to the EC’s work plan for the 12th parliamentary polls, likely to be held in January next year, it has targeted to prepare a new policy to demarcate constituencies by reviewing the previous policy by January this year and complete the delimitation by June.
KM Nurul Huda-lead commission brought changes to boundaries of 25 constituencies ahead of the 11th parliamentary polls in December 2018.
Another commission, headed by Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad, redrew the boundaries of 87 constituencies in 2013 before the 10th parliamentary elections.
ATM Shamsul Huda-led commission brought massive changes to 133 constituencies before the ninth parliamentary polls in 2008.