EC starts working on parliamentary constituency demarcation

FE Team | Published: December 25, 2017 00:10:34

The Election Commission (EC) has started working on the delimitation process of the parliamentary constituencies where there are issues or disputes over the boundary of the parliamentary seats, reports bdnews24.com.
The EC will be working on the 300 seats, but EC officials said they see possibilities of minor changes to the delimitation of 50 to 60 constituencies ahead of the next general election.
The delimitation became necessary because of the division of local government bodies like upazilas, municipalities, city corporations and union councils and the inclusion of the enclaves in five years after the last demarcation of the constituencies in 2013.
The EC is now collecting information from the government on the administrative areas created or changed in past five years.
It sent letters to the deputy commissioners and election officers of the 64 districts, seeking necessary documents on December 18.
The 11th parliamentary election is scheduled to take place between December 2018 and January 2019.
After taking office in February, the KM Nurul Huda-led EC announced a roadmap or work plan on July 16 for the next parliamentary election.
According to the plan, the work to demarcate the constituencies was supposed to end by December this year.
The EC had said it would make new guidelines on the demarcation of the parliamentary seats in July and August.
It would hold a discussion with the geographic information system or GIS experts in August, make a draft of the demarcation in October, call for objections in November and gazette the final delimitation in December, the EC had said in the work plan.
As the work for delimitation did not start in line with the plan, now the EC has moved to demarcate the constituencies following the existing law - the Delimitation of Constituencies Ordinance, 1976.
The Huda-led EC had also planned to finalise the draft of the 'Delimitation of Constituencies for Elections to Parliament Act, 2017' before the next election to delimit the parliamentary seats.