The political parties attending the National Consensus Commission’s second-round dialogue session on Monday could not reach a consensus on the issues of women’s representation in parliament and the composition of upper house issues.

In the session, the NCC proposed two revised formulas concerning women’s representation and the composition of the upper chamber, but both ideas were rejected by the majority of the political parties.


During the first half of the dialogue session, held at the Foreign Service Academy in Dhaka, the commission suggested amending the constitution’s article 65 to cancel reserved seats for women and binding political parties, which would field 25 or more candidates in the national elections, for nominating one-third of their total candidates from women.

For the upper house, the commission, in the new formula, suggested that directly elected representatives from each of the 64 districts and 12 city corporations would form a 76-member upper house. The previous proposal was for a shared votes-based proportional representation in a 100-member upper house.

The NCC mentioned that the new suggestions were as per the outcome of its previous dialogues with the political parties. Primarily during the first round of its dialogue on 20 March and 19 May, the commission upheld the recommendations from the Constitution Reform Commission and the Electoral Reform Commission that proposed 100 reserved seats for women in the lower chamber.

According to NCC vice-chair Professor Ali Riaz, the majority of the parties, attending the first-round dialogue, had agreed on increasing the women’s reserved seats from 50 to 100. 

Despite that development, the NCC’s new proposal to abolish the reserved seats looked strange to many political parties.

Though Bangladesh Nationalist Party standing committee member Salahuddin Ahmed kept silent on the topic during the session, he said in the post-session press briefing that his party supported increasing the women’s reserve seats.

Iterating his party stance for secured seats-based proportional representation of women in the parliament, he said, ‘Binding the political parties to nominate women as one-third of their total nominations is not practically viable.’

Rejecting the commission’s new idea, the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami’s nayeb-e-amir Syed Abdullah Mohammad Taher said that his party was still favouring 100 reserved seats for women but recommended shared votes-based proportional representation.

Left-leaning parties, including the Communist Party of Bangladesh, Socialist Party of Bangladesh, Revolutionary Workers Party of Bangladesh, opposed the abolition of women’s reserved seats and proposed maintaining the existing election process, which is secured seats-based proportional representation, for the women’s reserved seats.

The SPB (Marxist) proposed direct election for 100 reserved women seats while the Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal-JSD proposed electoral college of women representatives to elect the 100 reserved women members.

In the debate, the National Citizen Party presented a new formula. NCP joint convener Javed Rasin said that a party might field women candidates to the tune of 10-15 per cent of its total candidates. Some of the women candidates, even if defeated in the national elections, may still secure reserved seats as per the NCP’s shared vote-based proportional representation.  

Ganosamhati Andolan chief coordinator Zonayed Saki partially supported the NCP proposal and recommended that a party should field at least 20 per cent women of its total candidates.

However, some religion-based political parties, including Islami Andolan Bangladesh, Khelafat Majlis, Nezam e Islami Party and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Bangladesh, opposed reserving seats for women and recommended direct election for both male and female candidates for 400 seats in the lower chamber.

Regarding the NCC proposal on the composition of the upper house, the BNP’s Salahuddin expressed skepticism, calling it ‘strange’.

He said that the BNP had earlier proposed an upper house comprising eminent citizens, such as scientists and human rights activists.

‘Our party supports a 100-member upper house composed of secured seats-based proportional representatives,’ he repeated his party stance.

NCP member secretary Akhter Hossen boldly criticised the idea of secured seats-based proportional representation, saying that this would make the upper house ‘worthless’ while serving merely as a copy of the lower chamber.

Akhter and Jamaat’s Taher strongly recommended shared votes-based proportional representation in the upper house.

At the post-session press briefing, NCC vice-chair Ali Riaz acknowledged the lack of consensus and adjourned the discussion for today. He said that the commission would analyse different proposals on the caretaker government, which came from political parties, and suggest its revised plan next week.



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