Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 86
In forceAn Act Providing for the Apportionment of Parliamentary District Representative Seats in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao
Seat counts stay as they were — Basilan 4, Lanao del Sur 9, both Maguindanao provinces 5, Tawi-Tawi 4, Cotabato City 3, Special Geographic Area 2 — but the groupings within them change again, and some population figures are restated.
Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Signed into law and operative unless later amended or repealed.
What this measure does
This is the region's third parliamentary district map in under 2 years, and the one currently in force.
The seat allocation is unchanged from the 2025 redistricting: thirty-two single-member districts, with Basilan on four, Lanao del Sur nine, both Maguindanao provinces five each, Tawi-Tawi four, Cotabato City three, and the Special Geographic Area two. Sulu, again, has none.
What changes is the composition. Municipalities move between districts — Lanao del Sur's 2nd District now takes Kapai where the 2025 act placed Tagoloan II — and Cotabato City's three districts are recomposed barangay by barangay, with the city's stated population falling by 23,439 to 359,944.
Procedurally it differs from its predecessor in a way worth noticing. BAA 77 amended Section 4 of BAA 58 by reference. This act does not amend anything; it re-enacts the whole apportionment as a fresh statute and simply repeals whatever is inconsistent with it.
Why it was proposed
The act gives no reason. It restates the policy of equitable representation and the same criteria as the two acts before it — population and geographical area, contiguous and compact territory, a floor of 100,000 — and then produces a different arrangement of the same number of seats.
Who it affects
- Every voter in the region, for whom this is now the operative district.
- Candidates, whose constituencies have been recomposed for the third time.
- Cotabato City residents, whose barangay groupings and stated population both changed.
- Sulu, still absent — and here without even the transitory clause the previous act provided.
Who would implement it
- Commission on Elections, through the Bangsamoro Electoral Office, which administers elections on this map
Funding
No appropriation. The act appropriates nothing.
What changes if it becomes law
- The map is re-enacted rather than amended, and inconsistent provisions are repealed.
- Municipality and barangay groupings are revised within unchanged seat totals.
- Cotabato City's stated population and district composition are reworked.
- The transitory provision on Sulu and the interim representative clause of the previous act do not reappear.
Raised during deliberations
No published record of the debate on this measure. Parliament’s journals cover sittings up to March 2023 only, and no committee report on it has been published.
What to notice
Three district maps in 23 months is the fact that matters most here, and it is worth stating plainly rather than treating as routine. BAA 58 drew the region's first constituencies in February 2024. BAA 77 redrew all of them in August 2025, removing Sulu's 7 seats. This act redraws them again in January 2026, keeping the seat allocation but reshuffling what sits inside it. For a voter, that means the answer to 'which district am I in' has changed twice since it was first given — and the registry's most useful function on this subject is simply telling people which act to read.
The two omissions are the substantive difference from 2025. BAA 77 carried a transitory provision contemplating Sulu rejoining the region, and a clause allowing the President of the Philippines to appoint an interim representative for a district created after the candidacy deadline. Neither appears here. Because this act repeals only what is *inconsistent* with it, and a clause about a future contingency is not obviously inconsistent with a map that omits Sulu, whether those provisions survive is a genuine question the text does not answer.
Two smaller discrepancies belong on the record rather than tidied away. The regional population is given as 4,545,586, exactly one hundred more than the 4,545,486 stated 5 months earlier, with no explanation. And Cotabato City's total drops by 23,439 between the two acts. Neither is large enough to change a seat, but in a document whose entire authority rests on population arithmetic, unexplained movement in the figures is worth a reader's attention.