EC to seek charter court ruling on non-Thai citizens

The Election Commission has decided to ask the Constitutional Court to rule on whether non-Thai citizens can be included for the calculation of the number of MPs in each province.

The poll body made the decision in the face of heavy criticism from the public and political parties of the approach it has taken to redrawing constituency boundaries for the coming general election.

The EC has insisted that this was not the first time it had included non-Thais in its calculation. However, opposition MPs and academics argued that such a practice could lead to the election being declared null and void.

The EC has said there should be one MP for every 165,226 members of the public, based on an Interior Ministry census that showed a total population of 66,090,475 as of Dec 31 last…