52 years ago, reserved seats in parliament were introduced to empower women. This time also 50 women have been elected members of Parliament in the reserved seats. However, due to the lack of specific parliamentary seats, the members of the reserved seats have to face various restrictions in their work.
According to the constitution, reserved women seats and general seats MPs are entitled to equal powers and privileges. However, there are some differences in selection. In the 300 general seats of the Parliament, members of parliament are elected through direct popular vote, but in reserved seats, elected members of parliament elect them. However, since nominations for these seats are given on a party basis, there was never any election in Bangladesh for the reserved seats as there were no other candidates.
The constitution does not specifically say anything about the scope of duties or responsibilities of MPs from reserved seats. There should be reserved seats only this is mentioned in the constitution. As a result, the number of reserved seats has changed repeatedly. Members of reserved constituencies are given responsibility for one or two constituencies as they do not have a specific parliamentary seat. From where they get the opportunity to raise the problems of the people of that area in Parliament.
But there are also limitations. Members of reserved women constituencies cannot do any development work they want from their own funds. Local parliamentarians should be consulted in the development work. Again, the reserved women members get less allocation even though they get equal opportunities. So they have less opportunity to work from that side. However, in terms of playing a role in the Parliament, the role of reserved and general seats is equal for all.
Stating that it is time to think about the relevance of reserved seats for women in the context of today's society, political analysts say that when this provision was made, there was no context in which women would contest elections as direct candidates. But in the present context reserved seats are not that relevant.
Analysts also say that the nomination of reserved seats is mostly done for political considerations, if it was not based on merit or experience, they could have played an important role in the Parliament. But because of that, we are not getting the expected results from there. Also, since there is one directly elected Member of Parliament for each seat, the role of women members becomes secondary.
Professor Shamsul Alam, Professor of Government and Politics Department of Jahangirnagar University, told Barta24.com that political parties are still not able to trust women in that way. Those in politics are also not being properly evaluated. That is why women are not interested in politics. Again, girls are more and more attached to the family line, all these reasons are discouraging those who want to do sophisticated politics. Many times those who stand in local level union, upazila or mayoral elections are humiliated and hence they are also discouraged.
He also said that women are being specially taken in reserved seats as a result of which they are also not having the capacity. They cannot go beyond the leader's words where our leader-centric trend is going on. It is not that which will be given according to the decision after discussion among the party, one person-one leader gives them (nominations). As a result, they do not have that freedom. In that case, there is no ability to work. But there are a few who are directly elected.
According to the instructions of the Election Commission, the participation of women in all political parties of Bangladesh has been said to be increased to 33 percent. The quota was supposed to be filled by 2020, but no one was able to fill it. Now that period has been extended till 2030. But even there no visible activities could be observed between the parties. The direct effect of which we can see from national parliament to local body elections. In the recently held 12th Jatiya Sangsad elections, women won only 20 out of 300 seats. Earlier, this number was 22 in the 11th Parliament. Even analyzing the last 4 elections, this number was limited to 18 to 22 people.
After the independence of Bangladesh, the participation of women in the society was less. As a result, women were lagging behind at every level of society, starting from education. From that idea, through the Representation of the People Order of 1972, a special opportunity was given to increase the participation of women in Parliament. But slowly, when the participation of women at all levels of society started to increase at a significant rate, in 2008, the Representation of the People Order of 1972 was amended to require all political parties to have one-third of women in every level of committee by 2020. However, even if it is not fulfilled, the reserved seats in 1972 have increased from 15 to 50 now.