Redrawing constituencies: 607 petitions before EC draft. How will they be settled?

The Election Commission (EC) says it has received 705 petitions so far to redraw the constituencies of 75 seats in the national parliament.

As these petitions were submitted before the initial draft of boundaries was completed, no decision has yet been reached on how they will be settled.

The EC says it will discuss the matter at its next meeting, but some are saying that the constituencies should be drawn up with either the voter count or overall population being the basis for the decision.

The EC has an obligation to delimit the boundaries of each constituency before the parliamentary elections and publishes a draft defining the 300 seats before the polls. After hearing any appeals and objections on this draft proposal, the gazette of the final boundaries is published.

The EC’s initial boundaries were finalised a few months ago with the upcoming elections in view. Officials at the agency have hinted that the date of the draft’s publishing may be discussed in the next commission meeting.

The sixth commission meeting of the EC led by AMM Nasir Uddin was held on Wednesday. Initial discussions were held on the boundary applications at the meeting.

Highlighting the progress at the meeting, Election Commissioner Abul Fazal Md Sanaullah said: “So far, 607 applications have been submitted. Various people have made these applications in various ways, seeking the redrawing of 75 seats. Research on these applications has already been completed at the committee level. A detailed discussion will be held on this after Eid.”

Although the draft boundaries have not been published yet, the commission wants to review and settle the applications that have already come to the commission.

The National Assembly Electoral Boundary Delimitation (Amendment) Ordinance, 2025 was issued on May 12.

Asked about following the delimitation “guidelines”, Election Commissioner Sanaullah said: “The delimitation of the boundaries will be done according to the law we have. For example, the things that are in the law – administrative integrity, geographical location, population, number of voters and historical basis – will also be taken into consideration while delimiting the boundaries.”

He said, “The number of voters is ‘correlated’ with the population. In the context of Bangladesh, we may not be able to maintain the population aspect at a uniform rate.”

Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus said in his address to the nation on Jun 6 that the next national election will be held on any day in the first half of April, 2026. Based on this announcement, the EC will publish a detailed roadmap for the election at an appropriate time.

The Electoral Reforms Commission had recommended the formation of an independent commission to delimit the boundaries.

In this regard, Abdul Alim, a member of the Electoral Reform Commission, said: "The issue of demarcation is a technical task. Like many countries in the world, we have recommended setting up an independent demarcation commission to keep the limitations on electoral constituencies free from controversy. This does not have to be done now, the recommendation has been made for the long term."

This election expert is in favour of taking either the population or the number of voters into consideration in demarcation.

He said, "Voters will vote. In that case, maintaining a balance of voters with other factors can be taken into account in demarcation. Again, the population issue must be taken into account as always. There may be complications in balancing the two. It would be better to take either one or the other into account."

Alim suggested that the applications that have already been received be taken into account when publishing the draft demarcation of the 300 seats.

The expert said, "Those who have now sent in petitions for 607 seats - if the demands of those who have petitioned for 75 seats are taken into consideration and the draft is published, it will be a positive step. Then their applications will prove useful. But if no decision is taken on the applications now, then many of them may raise questions again once the draft is published."