Bangladesh Parliament Secretariat

Bangladesh Parliament Secretariat (Bengali: বাংলাদেশ জাতীয় সংসদ সচিবালয়) is a Bangladesh government department responsible for managing and supporting the parliament and the legislative branch. It is located inside the parliament of Bangladesh.^[1]

Parliament Secretariat is responsible for organizing the oath taking ceremony of members of parliament.^[2] It provides information on activities of the parliament to the press through the Public Relation Department.^[3][4] It allocates development and travel budgets to members of parliament.^[5][6]

Speaker Mohammad Abdul Hamid created an all-party parliamentary body to investigate corruption by staff of the Parliament Secretariat in March 2009.^[7] He also had the Comptroller and Auditor General go through all expenditures of the Parliament Secretariat since 1972.^[7]

In November 2011, the secretariat organized a discussion on population with United Nations Population Fund at the Parliamentary Member's Club.^[8] Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue Rounaq Jahan described the secretariat in 2012 as understaffed and underfunded while being relatively weak.^[9] She called for it to be strenghted and provided with a permanent staff.^[9] It build fences around the parliament in 2015, which drew criticism for undermining the architecture of the parliament.^[10]

The Parliament Secretariat Commission approved 3.28 billion BDT budget in May 2019 for members of parliament to spend.^[5] It published Parliamentary Practice and Procedure by Khandaker Abdul Haque, an expert on parliamentary affairs.^[11]

In 2020, the parliamentary session had to be stopped after around 100 employees of the Bangladesh Parliament Secretariat were infected with COVID-19 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh.^[12] In 2022, it returned 800 million BDT to the government treasury; the money was saved due to fewer working days during the pandemic.^[13]

In 2021, the Secretariate disqualified Mohammad Shahid Islam as a member of parliament after he was convicted of a crime in Kuwait.^[14]