The Election Commission (EC) yesterday asked the Constitutional Court to rule on the inclusion of non-Thai citizens in its formula to calculate the number of people represented by each MP, which will have an impact on the number of seats each party could win in the next election.
Based on the EC's calculation, there will be one member of parliament per 165,226 members of the public, based on a total population of 66,090,475, as of Dec 31 last year.
According to the EC, three groups of non-Thais are included in the population database, which it used to guide the redrawing of constituency boundaries.
These include people with permanent residence permits, those with temporary residence and individuals who have been living in Thailand for more than ten years.
However, migrant workers from neighbouring countries are not included in the poll agency's electoral calculation.
However, several politicians and academics have spoken out against the EC's formula, saying non-Thais are not eligible to vote so they should be excluded from the calculation. They suggested the matter be referred to the court.
Constitutional Court officials yesterday spent about 30 minutes examining the EC's petition.
According to a source, the Office of Constitutional Court is required to forward the petition to the court within two days of receiving the petition and the court must decide if it will accept it within five days.
Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam said as the matter involves pressing legal technicalities, the court should not take too long to consider it.
There will be a total of 400 constituency MPs and 100 party-list MPs in upcoming general election.