The cabinet gave nod to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution Bill, 2004 seeking to reserve 45 seats for women in parliament in addition to 300 general seats with their proportionate distribution among parliamentary parties.

The draft bill will be placed in the current parliament session that begins today after a 11-day recess.

The cabinet also approved the proposal to hang the portraits of only president and the prime minister in offices of government, semi-government and autonomous organisations.

The cabinet okayed a proposal to frame a law on automatic dissolution of local government bodies to clear way for regular elections every five years.

The amendment also proposes that a government administrator will take over on the expiry of local bodies' tenures in a move that makes their next polls mandatory in 90 days since.

Legal barriers and pending cases will not prevent dissolution of the organisations.

The cabinet also made it mandatory for the outgoing speaker to swear in lawmakers-elect in three days after elections.

In the event of the speaker's failure, the chief election commissioner will swear in the lawmakers in the next three days.

The meeting, held at the Prime Minister's Office with Khaleda Zia in the chair, also approved the National Policy, 2004 on arsenic mitigation and other programmes to fight the arsenic contamination of drinking water.

It also approved amendment to the Narcotics Control Act, 1990 limiting 0.5 percent alcoholic content in soft drinks.

The cabinet also okayed change in the Ortho Rin Adalat Act, 2003 and gave green light to the draft agreement to avoid double-taxation between Bangladesh and Vietnam.

It also approved the timeframe of action plan for privatisation of secondary-level textbooks.

Cabinet ministers and state ministers in charge of ministries participated in the meeting, also attended by the prime minister's principal secretary and secretaries concerned.