DHAKA — The National Consensus Commission has said it has decided to form a 100-seat upper house in which members will be chosen by proportional representation based on the share of the vote each party receives in the lower house.
The decision was announced on Thursday morning during talks with political parties at the Foreign Service Academy on the 23rd day of the dialogue. With parties failing to reach consensus and remaining divided despite extensive discussions, the matter had been left to the commission. The commission announced the decision as part of carrying out that responsibility.
Under the commission’s proposal, the upper house will have no power to initiate legislation. However, all bills other than money bills will have to be tabled in both the lower and upper houses. The upper house will not be able to indefinitely block a bill. If it holds a bill for more than a month, the bill will be deemed approved by the upper house.
The upper house will review and analyze bills proposed by the lower house and must approve or reject them within a set time.
If the upper house approves a bill, the bill passed by both houses will be sent to the president for assent.
If the upper house rejects a bill, it will be sent back to the lower house for reconsideration along with recommended amendments. The lower house may accept those amendments in part or in full, or reject them.
The BNP and its allies — the Nationalist Like-Minded Alliance, the 12-Party Alliance, the NDM and the LDP — have demanded that seats in the upper house be allocated based on seats won in the lower house. They also objected to the upper house’s jurisdiction.
On the other hand, the CPB-BSD and Jamiat Ulama-e-Islam have opposed forming an upper house at all. They said that, given the country’s current social and economic realities, there is no need for an upper house.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report