The Election Commission (EC) decided today (Tuesday) to ask the Constitutional Court to rule whether non-Thais can be included in the population for the calculation of the number of constituency MPs for each respective province.

There will be a total of 400 constituency MPs and 100 party-list MPs in the House following the forthcoming general election.

Earlier, the EC included non-Thais in the population, but the decision has raised widespread criticism, with several political parties and political academics voicing their disagreement, on the grounds that non-Thais are not eligible to vote and, therefore, they should be excluded from the calculation.

Some suggested that the inclusion of non-Thais in the calculation could distort the results. One clear example is Samut Sakhon Province, which has a high concentration of Myanmar migrant workers.

An informed EC source said that the commission met again to discuss the issue and decided to refer the matter to the Constitution Court for a ruling.