Forty Years of Bangladesh Parliament : Trends, Achievements and Challenges

This article makes a stock-taking of performances of the parliaments constituted in Bangladesh during 1973-2013. For the convenience of analysis, this article has been divided into a number of sections. The first section presents a brief background of Bangladesh parliaments. The second section gives a summary of the parliamentary elections held to date along with the internal composition of the parliaments. The third section identifies the major trends developed through the functioning of the parliaments during the period covered under the study. The fourth section discusses the achievements of the Bangladesh parliaments. The fifth section deals with the challenges that the parliament is confronting with until today and will be facing in the days to come. In the final section some concluding remarks have been made about prospects of parliamentary democracy in Bangladesh.