STAFF CORRESPONDENT

The National Consensus Commission has proposed establishing an upper house comprising elected representatives from each district and city corporation, and suggested abolishing the current system of reserved seats for women in parliament.

The proposals were presented on the 13th day of the second phase of dialogues with political parties at the Foreign Service Academy in Dhaka yesterday.

Earlier, the commission had proposed forming the 100-member chamber through a proportional representation (PR) system based on votes in the lower house election.

In its newly proposed model, the upper house would consist of 76 members: one representative from each of the 64 administrative districts and one from each of the 12 city corporations.

Elections to both the lower house and the proposed upper house would be held simultaneously.

Under the PR system, parties receive seats proportionate to their vote share. For instance, a party winning 30 percent of the vote would get 30 percent of the seats.

The commission tabled this fresh proposal as parties remained divided over how to form the upper house, even by the sixth day of discussions on the issue yesterday.

While BNP supported forming the house based on the number of seats won in the lower house, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, National Citizen Party, and some other parties favoured the PR-based method.

Meanwhile, instead of the current system of reserved seats for women, the commission recommended that parties contesting at least 25 constituencies nominate women for one-third of their candidacies under the first-past-the-post system, where the highest vote-getter wins.

Parties were also divided on this issue, which has been

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