Chief Whip confirms article 70 will govern presidential vote
Members of Parliament will not be free to vote for a presidential candidate outside their own party’s decision, Chief Whip of the Jatiya Sangsad Md Nurul Islam Moni said Tuesday, confirming that Article 70 of the Constitution remains in force for the upcoming presidential election and that any lawmaker who defies the party line will forfeit their parliamentary seat.
The Chief Whip made the remarks at a press briefing in the Jatiya Sangsad media centre, following a preparatory meeting on the presidential election attended by representatives of the ruling and opposition parties, Election Commission officials and the Parliament Secretariat.
The country is set to elect its 23rd president on August 20, with Parliament – as per the Constitution – casting the deciding votes.
Article 70 provides that a lawmaker who quits the party under whose banner they were elected forfeits their parliamentary seat, and that voting against one’s own party in Parliament likewise leads to the seat being declared vacant.
Whether this provision extends to the presidential election has been a matter of debate, and reporters raised the question directly at Tuesday’s briefing. Nurul Islam’s answer settled it in the government’s favour: Article 70 applies, and a vote cast outside the party’s decision will cost an MP their seat.
He added that this position has been affirmed even in the discussions around the July Charter, saying there is now consensus on four areas concerning Article 70, one of which relates specifically to the presidential election. Even once the July Charter is implemented, he said, Article 70 will continue to apply in presidential elections.
According to the Chief Whip, voting will take place on August 20 in the Jatiya Sangsad chamber from 2pm to 5pm. The deadline for withdrawing candidacy is the night of August 18, following the submission and scrutiny of nomination papers.
MPs will cast ballots according to their seat and division numbers, among a total of 349 voters in Parliament. If voting concludes before 5pm, counting will begin immediately and the result announced right after; if not, officials will wait until 5pm before counting.
The votes of the president, the leader of the House, the leader of the opposition and the acting Speaker will be broadcast live on television, and the process from ballot counting through to the declaration of results will also be aired live. The Chief Election Commissioner will act as Returning Officer, supported by Election Commission staff and the Parliament Secretariat.
The ruling party has yet to formally name its presidential candidate. Asked when a decision would come, the Chief Whip said the choice rests with the Prime Minister and will be made public when the nomination form is submitted. Party sources, however, indicate that Secretary General and Local Government Minister Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir is set to be BNP’s nominee.
Nomination papers for the post have already been collected by BNP and opposition parties, with the submission deadline set for Thursday.
On the opposition side, the 11-party alliance led by Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami has already finalised Colonel (retd) Oli Ahmad as its presidential candidate.
Speaking at the same briefing, opposition Chief Whip and National Citizen Party (NCP) convener Nahid Islam – whose party is a partner in the 11-party alliance – said a participatory election was essential for democracy and that the alliance wanted to signal its political position to the country.
He argued that, ideally, the presidential election should have followed the reforms envisioned in the July Charter: since the referendum had already returned a verdict in favour of reform, Article 70 could have been amended first, which would have made the elected president more widely respected and accepted.
Even so, he said, since the election is going ahead under existing rules, the alliance did not want it to pass uncontested – which is why it nominated Oli Ahmad. He noted that Bangladesh has not seen a genuinely competitive presidential election in nearly 35 years.
No push for a Constitution Reform Council
On a separate question, Nurul Islam said there was no need to form a Constitution Reform Council, arguing that necessary reforms could instead be carried out through constitutional amendments, as is common practice in other democracies.
Citing India’s example, he noted that the Indian Constitution, adopted in 1950, had been amended 106 times by 2024.
He reaffirmed the government’s commitment to implementing “every letter, full stop, comma and semicolon” of the July Charter, and said a new bill towards that implementation would be tabled in Parliament’s next session.
