"The new law avowedly sought to accomplish justice and equality among voters through the partition of the multi-member constituencies into one-member sub-districts, but this equality turned out to be of formal nature," the NCHR said in a statement.

The watchdog said that the division of the constituencies was conducted on "unclear bases that failed to ensure equality in terms of the population density, the geographical areas, the distance from the capital and the development dimension".

The new election law, which was adopted last week by the government, retained the one-person-one-vote system but raised the number of lower house's seats to 120 from 110 and divided the multi-member constituencies into a larger number of one-member voting areas.

The NCHR hailed the doubling of the women's quota to 12 from six seats, but said the new system failed to ensure equality among woman candidates in different constituencies.

"The law also did not provide for preparing electorate records for every sub-district, which deprives both voters and candidates of their legal right to examine the names and file objections, particularly when they are given only insufficient time of seven days for that," the NCHR statement said.

However, the country's top human rights body commended the government's move to allow the NCHR and other civic society bodies to supervise the polling process as well as its move to impose stricter penalties on certain election crimes, particularly vote buying.

King Abdallah, who has endorsed the new law, dissolved the lower house of Parliament in November, two years before the completion of its four-year term, amid reports that the chamber had failed to carry out its supervisory and legislative functions properly.

He also directed the government to arrange for "transparent and fair" general elections in the fourth quarter of the year.