The representation of religious and ethnic minority people saw a sharp decline in the 12th parliament, as a total of 14 of the community members returned to parliament, compared to 18 in the past two parliaments.
Of the 14 elected members of parliament from the religious and ethnic minority communities for the 12th parliament, 12 are from the ruling Awami League, and two won as independent candidates.
The Awami League initially nominated 20 religious and ethnic minority candidates in this year’s parliamentary election.
Later, the Awami League withdrew two such candidates in favour of the Jatiya Party.
There were 18 minority candidates from the party in contention for seats in Jatiya Sangsad.
Nine religious and three ethnic minorities won contests as Awami League candidates, and six lost.
Those who won as boat candidates are Ranjit Chandra Sarkar of Sunamganj-1, former Water Resources Minister Ramesh Chandra Sen of Thakurgaon-1, Soumendra Prasad Pandey of Kurigram-3, Sadhan Chandra Majumdar of Naogaon-1, Sourendranath Chakraborty of Naogaon-3, Biren Sikder of Magura-2, Nani Gopal Mandal of Khulna-1, Narayan Chandra Chand of Khulna-5, and Pran Gopal Dutta of Cumilla-7.
Jaya Sengupta won in the Sunamganj-2 seat and Pankaj Nath in the Barishal-4 seat as independent candidates.
Ethnic minority candidates won from Chittagong Hill Tracts districts.
Among them, Kujendra Lal Tripura won from Khagrachari, Dipankar Talukdar from Rangamati, and Bir Bahadur Ushwe Sing from Bandarban.
They are Manoranjan Shill Gopal of Dinajpur-1, Swapan Bhattacharya of Jessore-5, Dhirendra Debnath Shambhu of Barguna-1, Ashim Kumar Ukil of Netrakona-3, Mrinal Kanti Das of Munshiganj-3, and Jewel Areng of Mymensingh-1.
Nominating Kanai Lal Biswas for Pirojpur-2 and Tushar Kanti Mandal for Rangpur-3, the AL later shared these two seats with the Jatiya Party as part of the party’s greater alliance.
The ruling Awami League secured 222 seats in the January 7 elections, while independent candidates won 62 seats, the Jatiya Party secured 11 seats, and other political parties won three seats.
New Age
