The Election Commission (EC) of Bangladesh in the recent days announced a full-fledged plan regarding the necessity of redrawing boundaries of parliamentary constituencies in 61 districts of the country. The Commission also confirmed that the entire project would be based on the densities of population in an effort to preserve a steadiness in the number of voters for each seats.
What has been learnt from the EC guidelines is that due to the redrawing of the constituencies, the number of parliamentary seats for urban areas will increase in a considerable manner, on the whole for city corporation areas. However the rural areas will witness a stark reduction in the number of seats representing them. It was further stated, that each of the 300 newly demarcated constituencies would be made up of over 4 lakh people according to the report of the 2001 population census. In this regard the report indicates the enumerated population of the country to be over 12.3 crore at the time of the census while the total population including the heads not counted was estimated at 13 crore.
The Election Commission further confirmed that the constituencies will be redrawn by the means of the best utilization of the computerized Geographic Information System (GIS). In addition, to render the project a complete picture assistance will be sought from the Centre for Environmental and Geographic Information System, and from Local Government Engineering Department in exchange for payment. On the other hand the hired experts will also instruct the EC staff to develop the commission's capacity for running the system in the future. The complete preparation for the destined job will be followed by the EC to redraw the boundaries of the constituencies between March and April. In this context only on the month of May the Commission will commence a public consultation to ask for comments on the provisional new boundaries, and by the next June it will finalize the new boundaries towards the preparation of a final report.
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