List of political parties in Bangladesh

This article lists political parties in People's Republic of Bangladesh.

Bangladesh has a fading two-party system, which means that there are two dominant political parties, with extreme difficulty for anybody to achieve electoral success under the banner of another party.

However, though the center-left Awami League (AL) and center-right Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) dominated Bangladesh politics for a long time, currently both are heading coalitions of like-minded parties with the AL leading the secular and liberal elements while BNP is rallying the right-of-centre parties.

The Grand Alliance (মহাজোট) also known as 14 Party Alliance is a coalition government in Bangladesh that formed in 2008 and consisted of the Bangladesh Awami League, Jatiya Party, Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal- JASAD, Workers Party, Liberal Democratic Party and nine other parties.

The Liberal Democratic Party left the Grand Alliance before the election and contested independently. It joined the 18 Party Alliance in 2012.

The 18 Party Alliance is an alliance of some Bangladeshi political parties led by Bangladesh Nationalist Party and other right wing parties. It was formed on 18 April 2012 in Dhaka, extending its predecessor the Four Party Alliance. The 18 Party Alliance is formed as an effort to strengthen the anti-government movement demanding restoration of the caretaker government system.

The Bangladesh Awami League (Bengali: বাংলাদেশ আওয়ামী লীগ; translated from Urdu: Bangladesh People's League) is one of the two largest political parties of Bangladesh. It is the country's current governing party, after winning a majority in heavily criticized 2014 parliamentary elections where the majority of seats were uncontested. The All Pakistan Awami Muslim League was founded in Dhaka, the capital of the Pakistani province of East Bengal, in 1949 by Bengali nationalists Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, Yar Mohammad Khan, Shamsul Huq, and later Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy. In 1953, the party's council meeting voted to drop the word "Muslim" from its name in order to give it a more secular outlook, owing to the need to include the province's large Hindu population in Pakistani politics. Amongst the leaders of the Awami League, five have become the President of Bangladesh, four have become the Prime Minister of Bangladesh and one became the Prime Minister of Pakistan. His daughter and also the incumbent Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, has headed the party since 1981.

...
Wikipedia