The parliamentary standing committee on the law, justice and parliamentary affairs ministry on Monday decided to make some changes to the constitution amendment bill in order to skip holding a session of the outgoing parliament after a gap of 60 days inside the last three months before general elections.
The committee took the decision while examining the bill and hoped that the scrutiny would be completed in its meeting scheduled for today, sources in the committee said.
The committee discussed functions of the government in its last three months and decided to include a clause in the Article 141 (A).
'We have decided to include the clause to skip holding a session of the house after a gap of 60 days before general elections,' the committee chairman, Suranjit Sengupta told reporters after the meeting.
He said that the provision for holding an election-time parliament session would be dropped so that polls could be conducted in free, fair and credible manners.
According to the Article 141 A of the bill, general elections will be held (a) in case of dissolution of parliament by reason of expiration of its term, inside 90 days preceding such dissolution and (b) in the case of dissolution otherwise, polls will be held in 90 days after such dissolution.
Committee sources said that a new clause would be inserted with a provision avoiding parliament session during the election time.
Members of the committee viewed that if parliament did not function at the election time, there would be no major differences between
the power of the leader of the house and the opposition leader and it would help hold the polls in a credible manner.
Sources also said that the bill might be returned to the house for passage on June 29, if the opposition remained absent. But the time could be extended if the opposition came.
The committee members said that they would try to involve the opposition in the process even at the final stage and the prime minister also wanted to involve the opposition.
Sources said that BNP lawmaker Salauddin Qader Chowdhury could be paroled if he was willing to attend the house to discuss the issue.
'We have finalised the recommendations in the 27 meetings of the special committee on constitution amendment and the bill was prepared in the line with the recommendations. So there will be no more major changes in the bill,' committee member Rahmat Ali told New Age, adding that the standing committee would not take much time to finalise the bill.
The law minister placed the bill in parliament on June 25 and it was sent to the standing committee giving it two weeks for scrutiny.
Source : New Age
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