The first reading of the amendment to the Constitution to limit the number of members of the Parliament to 87 has been heard.

The amendment put forward by member Qasim Ibrahim to Wednesday’s session, suggest the the number of MPs to be fixed at 87. The amendment also calls to keep 87 constituencies and elect only one member from each constituency.

The current Constitution came into effect on August 7, 2008. Since then, three parliamentary elections have been held. The number of members is increasing with each election. The 17th parliament elected in 2009 had 77 members. There are 85 members in the 2014 parliament and 87 in the current 19th parliament.

Therefore, if the number of members continue to increase in the future, it will be a challenge economically and otherwise for a small country like Maldives , he said. In addition, he said, adding that the number of members should be fixed .

According to the Constitution, each administrative constituency must have one member for the first 5,000 registered member of the population or for each administrative constituency with less than 5,000 people. If the registered population of an administrative district exceeds 5,000, one member shall be elected for every 5,000 people exceeding the first 5,000 of the population.