The Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) yesterday proposed an amendment to the Constitution to curtail the power of the present government during the next general elections. It suggests that the role of the government be restricted only to the performance of routine work. CPB president Mujahidul Islam Selim also proposed the holding of parliamentary polls under the Election Commission (EC) instead of any government. He said Parliament should be dissolved before the announcement of the election schedule.

Regarding Army deployment, Selim said full freedom should be given to the EC to deploy any state forces to maintain law and order and ensure impartial elections.

He placed these proposals before the EC during their talks with chief election commissioner KM Nurul Huda at the Election Bhaban in the capital.

The CPB placed a 14-point charter of proposals, which include that a candidate has to be a political party member for five years before he/she could contest general elections; a transparent nomination system from the grassroots level; a ceiling of Tk. 3 lakh on party election expenditure; compulsory TIN for candidates above the taxable limit; purging

elections of black money, muscle power, misuse of religion and administration power; keeping electronic voting machines away from general elections till they are tried out in local-level polls; the introduction of online submission of nomination; increasing the number of reserved seats to 100 for women; arrangement of direct votes for women, and the introduction of the no-vote option.

As per the EC’s schedule, the BNP will join a dialogue with the EC on Sunday, while the Awami League has its date October 18. The EC’s dialogue with political parties will end on October 19, the day it sits with the Jatiya Party (Monju) and the Liberal Democratic Party. It began holding dialogues with political parties on Aug 24.