According to Delimitation of Constituencies Ordinance, 1976, delimitation of territorial constituencies is to be done on completion of each census to have a balance between the electoral districts in regard to the number of voters. It has to be done for the purpose of the general election following the latest survey of population.

"The Election Commission has not held a single meeting to discuss delimitation of the constituencies," Election Commissioner AK Mohammad Ali told The Daily Star yesterday.

He said the EC should immediately take a decision in this regard after reviewing the relevant laws. "We can still discuss the issue if the chief election commissioner convenes a meeting," he observed.

The EC delimited the constituencies and published a list of those on May 30, 1995. But the commission now seems unlikely to initiate the delimitation process before the ninth general election scheduled for early 2007, said sources.

According to the existing voter list, each of 67 constituencies has less than two lakh voters while 191 constituencies have over two lakh voters each. The number of voters in the rest 42 constituencies ranges between three lakh to six lakh plus.

Due to wide discrepancies between the constituencies in terms of population, the ceiling of TK 5 lakh on election expenditure seem unreasonable as all candidates irrespective of sizes of the constituencies must abide by the same upper limit of expenses, electoral experts observed.

They gave the example of neighbouring India where the ceiling on election expenditure varies from constituency to constituency.

Officials at the EC Secretariat said they have not taken any initiative for demarcation, as they did not yet receive any instruction from the commission.

They said demarcation of the constituencies is a huge task and may take at least a year to be completed. Moreover, the commission has to face political pressures and objections while fixing boundaries of a constituency.

Because of a large number of appeals and objections, it took over a year for the EC to complete the demarcation in 1995.

The constituencies across the country have varying sizes of enfranchised population. For example, the number of voters in Dhaka-1 and -2 has been less than 2 lakh while that is about 5 lakh in Dhaka-4 and over 6 lakh in Dhaka-5.

Similarly, Mymensingh-1 and -3 have less than two lakh voters while Mymensingh-4 has about 4 lakh. Gazipur-3 has 1.5 lakh voters while Gazipur-2 has 5.5 lakh.