Dr Ferdous Arfina Osman, professor of public administration at the University of Dhaka and a member of the Local Government Reform Commission, spoke with BD Global Times about the structural weaknesses of Bangladesh’s local government system, the need for administrative and financial decentralization, and the authority and accountability of elected representatives.
In the interview, she discussed the commission’s key recommendations, their implementation progress, the use of party symbols in local polls, women’s representation, and the changes required to make local bodies democratic, autonomous, and effective at delivering public services.
Commission proposals and stalled implementation
Question 1: You served on the Local Government Reform Commission, which submitted its final report in April 2025. Looking back, which recommendations seem most important, and how much has been implemented?
Answer: In Bangladesh’s history, the 2025 Local Government Reform Commission was the eighth national commission formed to propose reforms to the local government system. Its core objective was to recommend practical steps to turn local institutions into strong, autonomous, and inclusive bodies.
Drawing on research findings, recommendations from earlier commissions, stakeholder consultations across the country’s seven divisions, and a survey of 46,080 people across all 64 districts, the commission submitted 51 key recommendations. So far, the current government has adopted only one.
One of the commission’s central proposals was to return local government elections to a non-party system, as practiced before 2015. That year, the Awami League government amended local government laws to introduce party-based elections, which fueled widespread electoral violence, weakened community representation, harmed social cohesion, and reduced the effectiveness of local governance.
Encouragingly, on April 9, 2026, the National Parliament repealed the provision for party-symbol local elections from existing law. That decision should foster a more peaceful and competitive environment for local polls. Unfortunately, most of the commission’s other recommendations remain unimplemented. Urgent reform is needed across three fundamental areas to make local government strong and effective.
Three pillars: structural, electoral, and legal reform
1. Structural reform
The current local government system is fragmented, structurally inconsistent, and weak in coordination. Combining rural and urban tiers, Bangladesh has five types of local government institutions: three rural tiers—zilla parishads (district councils), upazila parishads (subdistrict councils), and union parishads—and two urban bodies, city corporations for major cities and municipalities for smaller towns.
In rural local government, direct popular elections are held for all positions only at the union parishad level. At the upazila parishad, voters directly elect the chairman and vice chairmen, while elected union parishad chairmen within the subdistrict also sit on the upazila council without a direct mandate to run it.
Zilla parishads, meanwhile, are formed through indirect elections. Although elected upazila chairmen contribute to forming district councils, they lack a direct popular mandate to govern them. This creates structural weakness and accountability gaps that hinder effective management. By contrast, urban city corporations and municipalities are both democratically elected institutions.
The commission recommended establishing a coherent framework across all five institutions—zilla parishads, upazila parishads, union parishads, municipalities, and city corporations—especially by ensuring rational ward demarcation and democratic elections at every tier under uniform principles.
Modeled on the national parliamentary system, the commission also proposed a uniform organizational structure with two distinct wings in every local body: a legislative and policymaking council, and an executive council.
The policymaking council would comprise all elected members, including the chairman or mayor, along with standing committee members. The executive council would consist of the chairman and five to six full-time members responsible for day-to-day administration, elected by the council’s members from among themselves.
India introduced a comparable constitutional framework for rural and urban local bodies through its 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments in 1992, which took effect in 1993. Such a system would curb excessive concentration of power in the hands of a single chairman or mayor, allow elected members a meaningful role in decision-making, and strengthen checks and balances, democratic practice, and local accountability.
2. Electoral reform
Closely linked to structural change is urgent electoral reform. Currently, elections across local government tiers take place at different times under separate laws and procedures. Making local bodies genuinely democratic begins with determining a rational number of wards based on population at every tier.
Union parishads vary sharply in size and population, ranging from roughly 12 sq km to 1,500 sq km in area and from about 4,000 to as many as 400,000 residents, yet every union has the same nine wards. That mismatch prevents equitable and efficient allocation of resources and services.
The commission proposed adjusting union parishad wards from nine to 39 based on population, with each ward representing roughly 1,200 to 1,500 residents. Upazila and zilla parishads currently have no ward system at all; the commission said electoral wards should be created for them as well.
For upazila parishad elections, each union could serve as three wards, giving a five-union subdistrict 15 electoral wards. Similarly, for zilla parishads, each upazila could be divided into three to five wards depending on its area. These wards would exist solely for electoral purposes to strengthen representation and institutional accountability.
To align with the parliamentary model, the commission recommended ending direct elections for chairman and mayor posts. Voters would directly elect local councilors or members, who would then elect a chairman or mayor from among themselves. At present, disproportionate authority sits with the chairman or mayor, turning many local councils into one-person operations where other elected members have little or no effective say. Indirect leadership selection would distribute power more evenly and reinforce democratic norms.
3. Legal reform
Bangladesh’s local government system is currently governed by five separate statutes and hundreds of rules because the institutions emerged at different periods through disparate laws, circulars, and gazette notifications.
This tangle of overlapping rules creates confusion, duplication of duties, decision delays, and weak coordination, ultimately degrading local public services. Reliance on executive circulars and gazettes also opens the door to political interference and abuse of power. Following the 2008 Shawkat Ali Commission, the 2025 commission recommended enacting two unified umbrella laws—one for rural local government institutions and one for urban bodies.
Administrators, upcoming polls, and executive power
Question 2: Since August 2024, city corporations, zilla parishads, upazila parishads, and municipalities have largely been run by appointed administrators rather than elected representatives. How has that affected public service and accountability?
Answer: Following the July 2024 mass uprising, many elected local representatives left their areas, leaving their posts vacant. To keep local institutions functioning, the interim government appointed administrators.
Under Article 59 of the Constitution, local government bodies must be composed of elected representatives. Once appointed administrators take over, those institutions cease in law to function as local government and act instead as local authorities. While administrators handle routine paperwork, their capacity to respond to residents’ needs and expectations is limited.
Elected representatives are bound by elections to answer to voters, giving them stronger incentive and responsibility to deliver services effectively. Residents also view elected officials as closer to their communities, building mutual trust that improves responsiveness and accountability—a vital link that weakens under appointed administrators.
Question 3: The Election Commission shifted its plan to begin union parishad elections in November and set a target to complete them in the first half of next year, by June 6. What is needed to make local polls credible, and should they be held on party or non-party lines?
Answer: Yes, union parishad elections are scheduled to take place between January 21 and May 2027, and I hope they will be credible.
The Election Commission has pledged free, fair, and credible local elections, mirroring its commitment during the 13th national parliamentary election held in February this year. The government’s recent decision to adopt the commission’s proposal for non-party local polls should also reduce violence and broaden participation.
Still, to ensure credible local elections, the government must remain neutral and strictly enforce the electoral code of conduct. Authorities could also consider establishing local electoral tribunals to act swiftly against code violations.
Question 4: The commission proposed having elected council members choose chairmen and mayors rather than holding direct votes for those posts. How would this change affect voters and local councils?
Answer: As noted earlier, local bodies today often operate under one-person dominance because chairmen or mayors hold sweeping authority, sidelining other elected members. If voters elect only councilors or members and those members elect the chairman or mayor, every member’s role and weight will grow.
A chairman or mayor would then rely on the backing of fellow elected members. That mutual dependence would check excessive concentration of power, foster democratic culture, and make local institutions more efficient and accountable in delivering public services.
Financial autonomy, MPs, and women’s representation
Question 5: Local institutions remain heavily dependent on central government grants. What changes in fiscal power and administrative authority are needed for genuine decentralization?
Answer: Genuine decentralization requires decentralized local development planning alongside a balanced distribution of authority between central and local governments—meaning both fiscal and administrative decentralization.
Today, aside from city corporations and municipalities, local bodies rely on central government funds even to pay staff salaries. Grants for development projects under the Annual Development Programme (ADP) are handed down piecemeal to each tier from the center, while development partners run sector projects with little coordination with local councils. As a result, local bodies have minimal or no freedom to manage budgets or plan according to local priorities.
To ensure financial decentralization, the 2025 commission proposed a unified, decentralized District Plan encompassing the district council alongside upazila parishads, union parishads, municipalities, and city corporations within that district, as well as projects run by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and development partners. Decisions on allocating district funds and setting spending priorities should rest at the district level.
The Constitution already mandates administrative decentralization under Article 59, requiring elected local bodies at every administrative unit. Yet central ministries maintain parallel local offices performing overlapping duties, causing duplication, poor coordination, and wasted public funds. Although the government has transferred responsibilities for nine departments at the union level and 16 at the upazila level, the corresponding funds, staff, and financial management powers were not fully handed over. Transferring mandates on paper is not enough; funds and personnel must move with them.
Question 6: Should members of Parliament have any formal role in local government councils, or should Parliament and local government remain strictly separate?
Answer: Even though an MP and an upazila chairman share geographic constituencies, giving MPs any formal role in local councils undermines local autonomy and should be avoided for four reasons.
First, MPs are lawmakers whose job is to legislate and carry public concerns into national policymaking. Second, local bodies belong to the executive sphere while MPs sit in the legislature, so granting MPs formal authority in local councils erodes the separation of powers. Third, local institutions must remain free of national political dominance so MPs do not overshadow or weaken the authority of elected upazila chairmen. Fourth, any formal MP role in upazila councils is unconstitutional under Article 59, because MPs are neither elected to those councils nor accountable to or removable by them.
Question 7: Local councils have reserved seats for women, yet do elected female representatives exercise real decision-making power? What needs to change?
Answer: One-third of seats in local bodies are reserved for women, yet in practice this arrangement has fallen short. Under the 1997 union parishad law, voters directly elect women to three reserved seats, each spanning three wards where separate general members—usually men—are also elected. Overlapping jurisdictions frequently trigger friction, leaving male members dominant in decision-making.
To make women’s participation meaningful, the commission recommended reserving 30% of all wards across every local institution for direct election of women, implemented on a rotating rather than permanent basis.
In a nine-ward union parishad, for example, three wards would be reserved for women in the 2026 election, three different wards five years later, and the remaining three in the third cycle—giving women direct, unshared representation across every ward over three consecutive terms.
Question 8: Finally, what single reform do you believe would do the most to deliver state services effectively to ordinary citizens in districts and villages?
Answer: It is difficult to isolate just one reform to bring state services to grassroots citizens, but overall, adopting and implementing an effective decentralization policy would significantly raise service quality.
That decentralization cannot stop at administration; it must transfer financial power as well, giving local institutions the autonomy to draft their own development plans and spend funds according to community needs—centered on the commission’s District Planning model so local people’s real priorities guide development.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report