The Election Commission (EC) has decided to continue registering political parties whose applications are already in, while only those registered by November 20 will be allowed to contest in the December 18 parliamentary poll.

The commission has not been accepting any new application since October 20, the deadline for submissions.

The number of political parties

contesting in the upcoming poll might drop significantly compared to the previous elections due to the strict registration system.

Although 96 political parties contested in the 2001 parliamentary poll, the number might not exceed 35 this time around, officials in the EC Secretariat forecast

According to the EC's earlier decision, the process of registering political parties was supposed to be over yesterday, but on Sunday

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afternoon it had decided to keep the process open for parties whose applications are already with the commission.

"Political parties might get registrations after November 20, but those might not be able to contest in the upcoming parliamentary election since November 20 is the last date for filing nominations," NI Khan, chief of the EC's technical committee for scrutinising the applications, told reporters yesterday.

Asked whether the EC has been discriminating towards the applicant parties, NI Khan, who is also the joint secretary of EC Secretariat, dismissed the notion outright saying, "The parties that had applied for registration meeting the criteria, got registered quite quickly."

"Those who will not get registered before the upcoming parliamentary' poll, will not be registered because of their own failures to meet the criteria. Not because of our failure," he added.

A total of 107 political parties applied for registration, and till yesterday the EC registered 19 of them while a process is on to register another 13.

It already denied registrations to 50 for not meeting the criteria, while the technical committee is still scrutinising the applications of 25 others.

In a media briefing in the secre-tariat conference room, EC Secretary Humayun Kabir said his guess is that around 30 political parties will be registered for the upcoming parliamentary poll, while Joint Secretary NI Khan predicted that the number will be between 30 and 35.

Participation of such a large number of political parties makes election management very difficult for poll officials.

Only 14 parties contested in the first general election in 1973, but in

the second election, which was held under a military rule in 1979, the number dramatically climbed to 29.

And in the third parliamentary election in 1986, which was also held under a military rule and boycotted by a BNP-led alliance, 28 parties contested.

Despite boycotts by major opposition parties -- Awami League, Jamaat-e-Islami, a left alliance, and others -- 43 parties contested in the sixth parliamentary election on February 15, 1996.

But the sixth parliament was dissolved after only 11 working days, leading to the introduction of the constitutional caretaker governmentsystem.

The first caretaker government was formed in March of that year, and the seventh parliamentary election was held on June 12 with 81 parties contesting.

In previous parliamentary elections, political parties that exist only on papers, failed to win any seat in the house with the paltry votes they managed to bag.

It has been reported many a time that such parties often sell their polling agents to major politi -cal parties’during elections.

It is also widely suspected that some people have the penchant for heading those parties because that is some kind of a status symbol for