After the vote, who watches the MPs? 'Sangsad Nazar' aims to bridge accountability gap

Before an election, politicians go to voters. They knock on doors, attend meetings, listen to local demands, and make promises in the hope of securing a mandate.

Once the ballots are counted, however, that relationship can become considerably more distant.

For Shafayet Mahamud, a tech entrepreneur and researcher, this gap between voters and their elected representatives became the starting point for "Sangsad Nazar", a digital platform designed to help citizens monitor MPs, track political promises, and question their representatives beyond election day.

The idea took shape as Bangladesh entered the post-July political period, when, Shafayet says, people were increasingly thinking about their rights and the country's future.

Ahead of the 13th parliamentary election, he visited his own constituency and observed the contrast between the accessibility of candidates before voting and the difficulty of reaching elected representatives afterwards.

"Before the election, candidates come to people's doors and make various promises. But after the election, the picture changes," Shafayet told The Business Standard.

"People can no longer easily reach their representatives, discuss their problems or track the promises that were made," he said.

That absence of a public mechanism to maintain the voter-representative relationship led to the idea of "Sangsad Nazar".

The homepage interface of the Sangsad Nazar website, which tracks MPs’ activities and election pledges. Photo: Screengrab

From one constituency to all 300

The project initially focused on Shafayet's own constituency.

But as he researched the platform's architecture and planned how it would work, he says he realised that the problem was not confined to one constituency.

"If I feel this gap in my own area, the people of the other 299 constituencies should have the same need or aspiration," he said.

The project was therefore expanded into a nationwide platform covering all 300 directly elected constituencies.

Bangladesh's parliament has 350 seats, with 300 MPs elected directly by voters and 50 seats reserved for women. Sangsad Nazar tracks MPs across all 350 seats, including the reserved seats.

The platform currently features profiles of 348 sitting MPs and brings publicly available information about representatives and their constituencies together in one place.

It also tracks election manifesto commitments, the 84 clauses of the July National Charter, and the 133 ordinances issued by the interim government.

The idea is to make information that is often scattered across government documents, political party statements and news reports easier for citizens to find and follow.

Sangsad Nazar's approach is not limited to recording what politicians say. It attempts to follow what happens afterwards.

Manifesto commitments are classified according to their progress, while the platform follows the status of the July Charter's clauses and interim government ordinances.

The ordinance tracker, for example, records the legal status of the 133 ordinances and links entries to government records, allowing users to consult the underlying documents themselves.

Keeping manifesto promises in view

One of Sangsad Nazar's central functions is tracking commitments made in the BNP's election manifesto.

Rather than directly tracking which bills are being passed in parliament, the platform follows individual manifesto commitments and records whether they have been implemented, are in progress or have been stalled.

That distinction is important.

Election manifestos often receive intense public attention before voting but can fade from public discussion once a government takes office. By tracking commitments throughout the parliamentary term, Sangsad Nazar aims to keep those promises visible beyond election day.

The platform's approach, however, also raises a fundamental question: how is progress against a manifesto commitment determined?

Shafayet says Sangsad Nazar is a data-driven platform and does not publish personal opinions or political commentary. It relies on publicly available government information, official websites, and information from reliable news organisations.

The platform also provides source links with its entries so users can trace information back to government documents or other sources.

If an error or objection emerges, Shafayet says the information will be fact-checked and updated through the platform's contact mechanism.

So far, no political party, MP or government institution has formally challenged information published on Sangsad Nazar.

Shafayet says that is partly because the platform is still new and has yet to reach a large audience.

Tracking the July Charter and ordinances

The platform's scope extends beyond election manifestos.

Sangsad Nazar also tracks the 84 clauses of the July Charter, allowing users to follow their progress.

It separately maintains a tracker for the 133 ordinances issued by the interim government and their legal status.

According to the platform, 108 of the 133 ordinances have been enacted as laws, 18 have lapsed, four have been repealed by Acts, and three have been replaced by new laws.

Individual entries are linked to relevant government records, allowing users to consult the source material themselves.

This means the platform is not attempting to function as a real-time parliamentary bill tracker. Instead, it is bringing together several categories of public information that Shafayet believes are important for citizens trying to understand what happened to political commitments and major post-July legal measures.

The harder test - will MPs answer?

Perhaps the most direct accountability mechanism on Sangsad Nazar is also the one whose effectiveness remains untested.

Visitors can ask questions directly to their MPs through their profiles, creating a public channel through which constituents can raise issues with their elected representatives.

The idea is simple: rather than waiting until the next election to judge an MP, citizens should be able to question them during their parliamentary tenure.

But so far, the mechanism has not generated significant engagement.

Shafayet said the platform is still new and has not yet reached a large audience. As a result, it has received limited public response, while no MP has so far answered a question submitted through the platform.

That is likely to be one of Sangsad Nazar's biggest challenges.

A digital platform can create a channel for accountability, but it cannot by itself ensure that citizens use the channel or that politicians respond.

For Sangsad Nazar, the next stage is therefore less about building another feature and more about creating enough public engagement for the platform to become relevant to MPs.

Who watches the watchdog?

The platform's political neutrality is another issue that will become increasingly important if it gains a larger audience.

Shafayet says Sangsad Nazar is not aligned with any political party and that its content is based on publicly available data rather than personal views.

The initiative began as a personal project but is now being operated jointly with BEPOS (Bangladesh Election and Public Opinion Studies), a research organisation focused on elections and public opinion.

He said the project has not received any grants or external financial assistance so far.

The platform also says users can flag errors and that information can be corrected when necessary.

For now, however, the initiative is still in its early stages, meaning many of its accountability mechanisms have yet to be tested under political pressure.

That could change if political parties, MPs or citizens begin actively using or challenging the information published on the site.

An idea that predates Sangsad Nazar

The concept of digitally monitoring elected representatives is not unique to Bangladesh.

Shafayet points to international examples, including the UK's TheyWorkForYou, as evidence that citizens in other democracies already have digital tools to monitor parliamentary activity and representatives.

Bangladesh has also had an earlier attempt.

In 2018, an initiative called "Amar MP" was launched to facilitate communication between MPs and constituents. Shafayet says that initiative was primarily focused on communication and did not continue in the same form.

Sangsad Nazar is attempting a broader approach by combining representative profiles with public records, election promises, legal developments, and citizen questions.

Its ambition is therefore not simply to make MPs easier to contact, but to create a continuing public record of the relationship between voters and their representatives.

Accountability beyond election day

For Shafayet, that relationship should not begin and end with the ballot box.

Voting gives an MP a mandate to represent constituents in parliament. In return, citizens should have the ability to ask how that mandate is being used and how far their demands are being addressed.

"We give a representative our mandate through voting and send them to parliament," he said. "So, people should have the full right to demand accountability over how much of their expectations and public demands are being implemented."

He sees this continuing scrutiny as an important safeguard for democracy.

The platform is intended to remain active throughout the five-year parliamentary term, although Shafayet expects its impact to become particularly visible before the next election, when voters once again assess the representatives, they elected.

For Sangsad Nazar, then, the ultimate measure of success will not be the number of profiles on its website or the number of commitments in its database.

It will be whether citizens actually use the information to ask questions, demand answers and make more informed choices at the next election.

The platform has built the infrastructure for that relationship.

The harder part is making both sides of it engage.