Effectiveness of the Standing Committees of Local Government in Bangladesh: A Study of Union Parishad

Standing committees of local government play a critical role in the growth of the community. Committees are trying to create a safe environment, a well-developed educational system, a stable law and order situation, high-quality health care, and a robust ICT infrastructure, among other things. In this vein, the purpose of this paper is to assess the performance of several standing committees established pursuant to the UP Act 2009 in carrying out their duties. This paper discovered some essential aspects, such as committee meetings are not held on a regular basis, meeting discussion is little more than meeting each other and gossiping, and meeting report writing and submission to authorities is a very rare occurrence. It was also discovered that standing committees suffer several issues, such as political influence, chairman control, not bothering committee decisions, lack of robust openness and accountability mechanisms, and so on. This study also included some policy recommendations for overcoming the aforementioned problems and guaranteeing an effective committee system in Bangladeshi local government.