RPA (Amendment) Bill, 2023 placed in JS

UNB  :
The ‘Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill, 2023’ was placed in Parliament on Monday with a new provision in an order to authorise the Election Commission to postpone or cancel the election result of one or more than one polling stations during the election.

Law Minister Anisul Haq placed the Bill in Parliament, which was sent for further scrutiny. The Committee has been asked to submit its report within 15 days.

The approval came from the Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at her office.

As per the new provision, the authority has been empowered to postpone or cancel the result of one or more than one polling stations at any time during the election due to use of muscle power or any other reason.

There is no issue of canceling the entire election in the proposed law.

That means if the EC thinks that there is a problem with the balloting of a polling station, it can cancel or postpone its balloting during the election. It may be during balloting or ballot counting.

In the existing law it says that the Election Commission may stop the polls at any polling station [or entire constituency, as the case may be,] at any stage of the election if it is convinced that it shall not be able to ensure the conduct of the election justly, fairly and in accordance with law due to malpractices, including coercion, intimidation and pressures, prevailing at the election. The proposed law, however, replaced the words ‘election’ with ‘polling’.