EC worry deepens as HC stay drags on

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Worried by the delay in disposing of a High Court (HC) rule on re-demarcation of parliamentary constituencies, the Election Commission (EC) has moved for removal of the stay on the redrawn boundaries to clear way for announcing the election schedule.

Counsels of the EC applied to an HC vacation bench on Sunday for vacating the stay order considering the urgency. But the bench did not entertain the petition as it was its last working day before the Supreme Court resumes October 12, EC sources said.

The EC might not be able to announce the schedule for the ninth parliamentary polls by November 2 if the HC stay on re-demarcation of the constituencies remains effective until November 6 as per HC orders.

But the commission must announce the election schedule early November in order to allow a required gap of 42 to 45 days between the announcement and poll date December 18.

In this situation, the EC counsels will move to the HC again on October 12 with the same petition in line with the EC guidelines, sources said.

“We are trying our best to remove the difficulties the Election Commission is facing regarding the re-demarcated constituencies,” EC counsel Shahdeen Malik told The Daily Star.

Former BNP lawmaker Abdul Mannan filed a writ petition challenging the EC’s July 10 gazette notification that finalised the re-demarcation of 300 parliamentary constituencies.

Following the petition, the HC on August 7 stayed the effectiveness of the notification for three months and issued a ruling on the government and the EC asking them to explain in two weeks why the notification should not be declared unconstitutional and illegal.

The HC stay order will expire on November 6. But Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) ATM Shamsul Huda on Wednesday said the EC would announce the schedule for the ninth parliamentary polls on November 1 or 2.

Now either the HC rule will have to be disposed of or the stay will have to be vacated in October to clear ways for the announcement of the election schedule, said legal experts.

“If the stay remains in force until November 6, the Election Commission cannot announce the election schedule on November 1 or 2,” one of them said.

Meanwhile, because of the stay order the EC cannot begin two of its vital tasks–preparing the constituency-wise electoral rolls and finalising the list of polling stations.

Prospective candidates also cannot start their election preparations because of the uncertainty about the constituencies. Many of them already communicated with the EC to know about the fate of the recent re-demarcation, EC officials said.

EC Secretariat officials, however, said they might begin preparing the constituency-wise voter lists and the list of polling stations on the bases of the new and old parliamentary boundaries.

“We are planning to prepare two sets of them considering the urgency. We will use one that is needed,” a senior official in the EC Secretariat said.

The project for preparing voter list with photographs and facilitating issuance of national identity cards is scheduled to hand over the voter list to the EC on October 12.

In 2006, a gazette notification on parliamentary constituencies was published in a bid to hold the ninth parliamentary polls on January 22, 2007. But the election could not be held following violent political turmoil in the country that ultimately led to the declaration of the ongoing state of emergency.

On July 10 this year, the EC repealed the previous delimitation and published the new gazette notification re-demarcating the parliamentary constituencies.

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