THE DEVELOPMENT OF PARLIAMENTARY OVERSIGHT IN BANGLADESH - A RESEARCHNOTE

The parliament of Bangladesh is not primarily a lawmaking body but one whose main function is to exercise oversight over the executive. In t he first 20 years of the existence of the Jatiya Sangsad (JS), only it s most recent incarnation, elected in 1991, has had a sufficiently lar ge proportion of opposition MPs to encourage the use of existing overs ight procedures. When we compare the fifth JS to the first JS elected in 1973, we see that the use of both call-attention motions and questi ons has increased, and that the number of committees and committee pos itions has proliferated in the fifth JS. We also find that the focus o f oversight is surprisingly on national rather than on local issues.