Elections for women's reserved seats May 12

The election for the reserved women's seat in the 13th parliament will be held on May 12. The Election Commission (EC) will announce the official schedule for the polls on Apr 8.

EC Secretary Akhter Ahmed made the announcement after a commission meeting on Monday. The meeting was held in the morning and chaired by Chief Election Commissioner AMM Nasir Uddin.

Akhter said the deadlines for submitting nomination papers to returning officers at the Election Commission Secretariat, scrutiny, and withdrawals will be announced alongside the schedule.

According to the existing law, reserved seats for women in parliament are distributed in proportion to the number of seats won by the parties in the elections.

Members of parliament elected to the general seats in parliament vote to elect members for the reserved seats.

BNP won 209 seats in the 13th general election. Its alliance partners Gono Odhikar Parishad, Bangladesh Jatiya Party (BJP) and Gana Sanghati Andolan won one seat each.

Jamaat-e-Islami is sitting in opposition after winning 68 seats. Their alliance partner NCP won six seats, while Bangladesh Khelafat Majlis won two and Khelafat Majlis one.

Outside of these two alliances, Islami Andolan Bangladesh won one seat.

Independent candidates won seven seats.

According to the initial distribution, the BNP alliance may get 36 reserve seats, the Jamaat alliance 13, and the independents together one reserved seat.

The EC published a gazette of the elected members of the parliament on Feb 13, the day after the polls.

The vote for the reserved women's seats must be held within 90 days of the gazette's publication.

The voter list of the members of parliament elected in the general election has already been finalised.    �"bdnews24