registration of new political parties
EC wants to complete process by Mar
UNB
The Election Commission is most likely to complete the registration process of new political parties by March as 76 parties seek registration with the Commission ahead of the 11th parliamentary elections, reports UNB. An EC committee, headed by its additional secretary Mokhlesur Rahman, has started scrutinising the applications to know whether the parties fulfill the conditions for registration.
The Commission last week sent a list of 76 new parties to the Home Ministry asking the intelligence agencies to examine if there is any banned political outfit among the applicants, said EC Secretary Helal Uddin Ahmed. The committee will submit its report to the EC Secretariat on March 8 next and then place it in the Commissions meeting for its final decision, he told UNB. Mokhlesur Rahman, also convener of the scrutiny committee, Theres a possibility to complete the registration process by March.
But, EC officials said they are not getting the existence of offices and activities of many of the 76 political parties during their initial scrutiny, which is one of the prerequisites to be eligible for registration. They said they have found commercial entities, houses and shops in the office locations the parties mentioned in their applications. This time, the Commission may award registration to a handful of parties.
After the issuance of a public notification on October 30 last, a total of 76 political parties applied to the Commission seeking registration within the December 31 deadline. As per the Representation of the People Order 1972, only registered political parties are eligible to contest the national election and local elections with their respective permanent election symbols reserved by the EC, while unregistered parties can contest the polls fielding independent candidates.
Ahead of the 9th parliamentary elections in 2008, the Commission headed by ATM Shamsul Huda, for the first time took initiatives to bring the countrys political parties under the ECs registration.
A total of 117 political parties had applied for the registration following a public notification issued on October 15, 2008 in this regard. But only 39 parties of the 117 applicants were registered after the submission of their draft organisational charters to meet the condition of getting registered.
Later, the Commission cancelled the registration of Freedom Party, one of the 39 registered parties, as the government banned the party. Besides, the registration of Jamaat-e-Islami was cancelled after a High Court order in August 2013 declared its registration illegal.
In February 2013, the Commission gave registration to another party Bangladesh Muslim League-BML. In 2013, 43 new political parties applied to the EC seeking registration and the then Commission headed by Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad awarded the registration to only two parties Bangladesh Sangskritik Muktijot (Muktijote) and Bangladesh Nationalist Front (BNF)-a few months before the 2014 national election.
The number of registered political parties is now 40, including the three that got registration in 2013. According the Article 90 (B) of the RPO, if any political party desires to be registered, it needs to fulfill one of the three conditions. The three conditions are securing at least one seat with its electoral symbol in any parliamentary election held since Bangladeshs independence; or securing five percent of total votes cast in the constituencies in which its candidates took part in any of the aforesaid parliamentary elections; or established a functional central office, by whatever name it may be called with a central committee, district offices in at least in one-third administrative districts, offices in at least one hundred upazilas or metropolitan thana having a minimum number of two hundred voters as its members in each of them.
