Moinul Haque Chowdhury bdnews24.com Senior Correspondent
Dhaka, Oct 17 (bdnews24.com) -- Ruling Awami League will get all of the newly created five reserved seats for women in parliament as per the 15th Amendment to the constitution.
Parliament on June 30 passed the Constitution (Fifteenth Amendment) Act, thus increasing the number of reserved seats for women in parliament to 50, from the existing 45.
Election Commission (EC) officials clarified that though Awami League will get four seats in the proportional representation (PR) system in parliament, it will also get the fifth seat for its majority, in terms of reserved women seats.
None from the Jatiya Party or BNP will get any of the seats. The four-party alliance, led by BNP, would have received one seat if Jamaat-e-Islami had been in the alliance.
The five new seats have been distributed in favour of the political parties and alliances as per the Jatiya Sangsad (Reserved Women's Seat) Election Act, 2004.
The EC sent the seat distribution information to the secretary of the parliament Secretariat on Monday.
The parliament Secretariat in a letter on Aug 10 requested the EC to hold polls for the five new reserved seats for women.
Election Commissioner M Sakhawat Hossain told bdnews24.com on Monday that the Parliament Secretariat was informed of the distribution of the five seats. "It will be possible to take proper steps to fill the seats next month after publishing the voter list for the 300 parliamentary seats."
Deputy secretary (election) Mihir Sarwar Morshed of the EC Secretariat told bdnews24.com that the 50 reserved women seats were divided, in favour of the political parties or alliances, against the 300 general seats.
In the proportional representation (PR) system, the proportion of reserved seats for women in parliament against the general seats stands at 0.17.
The official said that the reserved women seat allotment for Awami League and the Grand Alliance, led by it, against their 239 seats (206 seats of Awami League, three of JASAD, two of Workers Party and three independent seats under 'boat' symbol) is 39.83 - near about 40.
"As an ally of the Grand Alliance, the Jatiya Party will not receive any other women seats as all are independent in distribution of women seats. The party gets 4.17 seats in the proportional representation (PR) system in parliament. Currently it has four women seats."
Under the same system, opposition BNP and its alliance get 5.33 women seats against their general 32 seats. However, it will not receive any new seat allotment as the five seats have already been allotted.
Sarwar Morshed said that Jatiya Party and Jamaat took their positions out of their alliances in distribution of women seats, following the gazette publication of the results of the ninth parliament.
"Had Jamaat remained with the BNP alliance, Awami League probably would have got 40 seats out of the 50 seats, Jatiya Party four, BNP five and the remaining one would have been in favour of the BNP alliance."
Jamaat bagged two parliamentary seats in the ninth parliamentary election and their allotment for women seats in the proportional representation (PR) system is 0.33.
Under the PR system, Awami League would be allotted 40 seats; currently it has 36. A result of which it also gets four out of the five newly created women seats.
In this circumstance, the additional women seat will go in favour of the party or alliance which has the highest number of women seats.
For this reason, the EC official said, that with the additional seat, the number of women seats allotted to Awami League stands at five, taking the party's total to 41.
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Source: bdnews24.com
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