The 13th National Parliament election, held alongside the February 12 referendum, formally restored Bangladesh to elected government. Since 2008, three consecutive national elections were alleged to have been engineered under the Awami League government. However, the July uprising of 2024 had put an end to that continuity of Sheikh Hasina regime and placed an interim government in charge with a specific responsibility: Undertaking structural reforms before restoring electoral politics.
Public expectation after July was therefore not simply a change in leadership but a change in how authority would be exercised. To translate that expectation into policy, the National Consensus Commission was formed to negotiate a set of institutional reforms acceptable across political parties, so that the next election would not merely produce a new parliament but a rebalanced system of governance.
Despite prolonged dialogue, the negotiations did not produce unanimity. The July Charter was eventually signed by most political parties and subsequently approved in the referendum, but the BNP attached a formal note of dissent to several provisions.
The central disagreement concerns the proposed parliamentary upper house. Several parties argue that seats in the upper house should be allocated proportionally according to each party’s national vote share, thereby allowing representation beyond constituency victories.
The BNP maintains a different view: The upper house should be composed according to the number of seats a party wins in the lower house. The referendum, however, endorsed the Charter as a single package, which included proportional representation. The BNP has nonetheless reiterated that it does not intend to implement those particular provisions despite accepting the broader reform process.
As a result, the political debate has shifted quickly from whether reforms should occur to how binding those reforms actually are.
At this point, the disagreement produces a legal complication. The Charter specifies that if an elected government fails to pass the agreed reforms within a defined timeframe, the provisions will be considered automatically enacted. Because the referendum was conducted on an all-yes or all-no basis, its approval represents direct public consent to the entire framework rather than to individual provisions.
The question therefore becomes unavoidable: Can a governing party implement its dissenting position after a referendum endorsement? If it can, the referendum risks becoming advisory. The purpose of a referendum is to reflect the popular vote's unanimous agreement on a constitutional issue; however, if a negotiated disagreement wins, the legitimacy of the Charter and further referendums is compromised.
Whether the BNP's institutional preference is warranted is not the only question at hand. It concerns whether a constitutional provision approved by a vote can subsequently be applied differently by the government that was given the authority to implement it.
Additionally, there is a functional concern that is more pragmatic but less legal. The political balance of the two houses would nearly mirror one another if the upper house were chosen based on the proportion of seats in the lower house. The upper house would be monopolized by the same party that leads the lower house.
Since the allocation of political power would be almost the same, legislation that was easily passed in one house would pass in the other with minimal trouble. The upper house would not be able to slow down hasty choices or analyze legislation in a meaningful way. It would repeat verdicts rather than review them, existing legally but not institutionally.
Generally speaking, bicameral governance is justified as a second chamber adds an extra layer of scrutiny and discussion; if both chambers generate the same result, the second chamber serves more as duplication than as a safeguard.
Despite having two chambers of parliament, the state would only have one appropriate legislative decision-making body. For instance, as BNP has won 209 seats in the parliament, following the proportional representation in the upper house based on the total lower house seat count, BNP is likely to get around 70 seats in the upper house, which also indicates a two-third majority in the upper chamber.
But, if the seats were allocated based on the percentage of the popular vote, the BNP would get nearly 50 seats, with other political collaborators breathing down BNP’s neck. In such a situation, policies that directly benefit the ruling party will be strictly reviewed and no decision from the lower house can easily pass the upper house without proper reasoning and review.
Thus, the current discussion goes beyond politics. A rare unanimity developed in public discourse following the events of July: The issue was not just who runs the government, but also how power has boundaries when the government is elected.
That expectation was supposed to be translated into institutional design through the Charter and the referendum. A government now has democratic legitimacy because of the election, and a reform framework now has democratic legitimacy according to the referendum.
These two missions must support one another rather than conflict with one another in order to maintain stability. A practical agreement would indicate that the reforms reflect a common constitutional commitment rather than a short-term political compromise, particularly in the issue of proportional representation in the upper house.
Such a move would increase trust that future governments, regardless of identity, will function within a balanced structure of authority rather than weakening any one party.
Therefore, the upper house debate is about more than just legislative architecture. It concerns whether the changes brought about by a unique political moment will be incorporated into long-lasting democratic practices, guaranteeing that the post-July system avoids the very concentration of power that that uprising aimed to abolish.
ASM Kamrul Islam is a Lecturer at Green University of Bangladesh and an alumnus of the University of Dhaka.
