The Parliamentary Standing Committee on LGRD Ministry yesterday decided not to amend the zila parishad act, a move that would have allowed elections of the local government body to be held on party lines.
The zila parishad bill was withdrawn apprehending possible disputes between upazila parishad chairmen and lawmakers.
The committee, however, finalised four separate bills for partisan elections to local government bodies — city corporations, upazila, municipality and union parishads.
According to the latest changes to the bills, councillor and member candidates will not be allowed to contest local polls with party symbols.
Only mayoral candidates in city corporation and municipality polls and chairman candidates in upazila parishad and union parishad polls will get party symbols.
The committee agreed that chairman and mayor candidates would contest elections in party line while the councillors and members will have a non-partisan contest, said committee member Fazle Hossain Badsha.
“But my opinion was there should not be two rules for a single local body. The election could be postponed if anyone challenges this, but the law minister said there is no scope of legal complications,” he said.
Badsha told the Dhaka Tribune that the amendment for municipality elections will be placed within a couple of days as the elections to around 240 out of 324 municipalities are due to be held by December 30. The remaining three bills would be placed in the House later on, he added.
On Sunday, LGRD and Cooperatives Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain placed the Local Government (Municipality) (Amendment) Bill 2015, incorporating the latest changes. The bill was sent to the parliamentary standing committee, which was asked to return the draft to the House within three days after scrutiny.
On October 12, the cabinet endorsed draft amendments to all the five local government laws incorporating provisions for allowing registered political parties to nominate their candidates in the local body polls.
Abul Hasnat Abdullah chaired yesterday’s committee meeting while LGRD and Cooperative Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hosain, Law Minister Anisul Huq and lawmaker Suranjit Sengupta were also present.