Bare offices.Thin ranks: Bangladesh's fringe parties fight for relevance 

The lift at the 13-storey Pritom Zaman Tower in Purana Paltan stopped one floor short of its destination. The final stretch to the Aam Janata Party, founded in 2025, headquarters required climbing a narrow staircase to the rooftop. Tucked into two modest rooms beneath a corrugated roof, the office overlooked one of Dhaka's busiest political neighbourhoods.

It was nearly five in the afternoon.

Inside, there were no crowded strategy meetings or rows of leaders debating the country's future. One man scrolled through his phone. Another lay stretched across several plastic chairs, catching an afternoon nap. A few others watched television in silence as an Indian soap opera played on the screen.

The scene was almost ordinary.

But it also carried an irony. The Aam Janata Party has built much of its political identity around opposing what it describes as Indian aggression and resisting Indian influence in Bangladesh. This afternoon, however, politics had temporarily given way to the routines of office life.

"We are here almost all the time," founding central committee member Mohammad Asgor Hossain told The Business Standard, gesturing around the room.

Keeping the party running is a collective effort. According to Asgor, the organisation survives almost entirely on contributions from its own members. Some leaders earn a living selling mangoes, while others trade honey or fish. Whenever office expenses arise, everyone contributes whatever they can. Even the electricity bill is divided among whoever can afford to pay.

"We don't want to depend on anyone," he said. "If we become dependent from the beginning, our politics will never grow."

That determination to remain independent has come at a price. Asgor said the party had opportunities to join larger political alliances but deliberately stayed away.

"Even if we receive no votes, no seats or nothing at all, we want to stand on our own feet," he said. "If we join a major party, they will eventually absorb us, and our own politics will never develop."

Financial hardship remains an everyday reality for many party workers. Labour wing president Mujahid Ibrahim said there are days when he cannot even afford the bus fare from Khilgaon to the party office and walks instead.

"There are days when I can't even afford the bus fare to come here," he said.

Despite failing to win a seat in the 2026 parliamentary election, the party insists it is already looking ahead.

"Our goal is to nominate candidates in all 300 constituencies in the next general election," Mujahid said.

The road to the election had itself been difficult.

In November 2025, the party's member secretary, Md Tarek Rahman, began a hunger strike unto death outside the Election Commission after the party was denied registration. The protest ended after BNP Standing Committee member Salahuddin Ahmed requested that he pursue the matter through the courts instead. Rahman was taken to hospital, and the party later appealed the decision.

The appeal succeeded.

In December 2025, the Aam Janata Party secured Election Commission registration and went on to contest the 2026 parliamentary election, fielding around 25 candidates, including Rahman from Dhaka-12. None were elected.

That visit marked the beginning of a week spent travelling across Dhaka to understand what had become of Bangladesh's smaller political parties after the election.

"Their key challenge is whether they can reach people, mobilise them and, most importantly, transform them into voters. If they can develop an adaptive strategic plan, they will survive and flourish. If they fail to do so, they will become completely irrelevant." — Asif Shahan, associate professor in the Department of Development Studies at the University of Dhaka

Months have passed since the 2026 parliamentary polls left more than 40 of the country's registered political parties without a single seat in Parliament. On social media, many continue to project the image of vibrant organisations—issuing statements almost daily, announcing programmes, sharing photographs from meetings and promising new political initiatives.

But what happens after the cameras are switched off and the campaign banners come down?

To find out, The Business Standard visited the headquarters of nearly a dozen registered political parties that failed to secure parliamentary representation.

The offices told very different stories.

Some buzzed quietly with organisational work. Others appeared to be surviving on little more than determination and volunteer contributions. A few had disappeared altogether.

Yet despite their contrasting circumstances, almost every party leader spoke less about the election they had lost than about the one they hoped to contest next.

For Bangladesh's smaller political parties, survival itself has become a form of politics.

The Bangladesh Development Party (BDP), founded in 2022, presented a different picture. There was no visible sense of post-election disappointment. Instead, conversations revolved around what came next.

General Secretary Md Nizamul Hoque moved between meetings while discussing preparations for the party's national council, organisational expansion and the upcoming local government elections. For the BDP, the immediate objective is not Parliament but building a stronger presence across the country.

The party says it now has committees in 45 districts and more than 100 upazilas, a network it hopes to expand further before the next electoral cycle.

"Our voice remains outside Parliament," Hoque said. "So now we are strengthening the organisation."

Rather than measuring success solely by parliamentary seats, the party is focusing on consolidating its grassroots base. It plans to field candidates in local government elections wherever it believes it has sufficient organisational strength.

"Strengthening our organisation at the district and upazila levels and expanding support for the party are our main priorities," he said.

A few kilometres away, the Bangladesh Congress, founded in 2013, headquarters at Banglamotor offered another glimpse into the realities of small-party politics.

Its office consisted of a single cramped room lined with plastic chairs, a handful of tables and a small cooking stove tucked into one corner. Old campaign banners and party posters covered much of the walls. One activist slept across several chairs while others drifted quietly in and out of the room.

Despite the modest surroundings, Office Secretary Mohammad Tushar Rahman insisted appearances did not reflect the party's level of activity.

"We have been active on the ground for years," he said. "The media has not really given us that attention."

For him, the party's biggest obstacle is not organisational weakness but visibility.

"If the media gives us more opportunities to present our views to the public, we believe we will be able to work more effectively for the people of Bangladesh," he said.

According to the party, organisational activities now extend across 55 districts, with leaders focusing on expanding committees and preparing for future elections rather than dwelling on the recent defeat.

In Mohakhali, Bangladesh Kalyan Party, founded in 2013, projected yet another strategy for political survival.

Following its national council in June, the party has shifted much of its attention inward. Chairman Syed Muhammad Ibrahim Bir Pratik said leaders are occupied with updating committees, reorganising district branches, preparing documentation for the Election Commission and maintaining communication across the political spectrum.

"We are now busy with our organisational activities," he said.

Rather than seeking headlines through large demonstrations, the party believes patient organisational work will better prepare it for future political opportunities.

"We have maintained quiet communication with everyone," Ibrahim said, describing an approach centred on rebuilding the party's organisational capacity.

Not every address, however, led to an active headquarters.

When TBS visited the registered office of Insaniyat Biplab Bangladesh, founded in 2017, in Gulshan, the party was nowhere to be found.

The security guard at the building said the office had been vacated roughly three months earlier. As far as he knew, the party had not opened another office since leaving.

The Bangladesh Republican Party's, founded in 2022, registered headquarters in Paltan offered another dead end.

The office door was locked. Calls to the hotline number listed on the party's official Facebook page went unanswered.

A staff member from a neighbouring office, who requested anonymity, said the office now rarely opens.

"Most of the time it's locked," he said. "They were quite active during the election, but nowadays they hardly open the office."

Across a week of reporting, six offices revealed six very different realities.

Some parties are quietly rebuilding from the ground up. Others continue operating with limited resources while trying to expand their organisations. A few struggle to maintain even a physical presence.

But among these differences lay a common thread. 

Almost none of the leaders spent much time talking about the seats they had failed to win. Instead, conversations repeatedly returned to district committees, youth wings, local government elections, membership drives and preparations for the next national polls.

For Nagorik Oikya, however, the post-election period has been one of reflection.

Party President Mahmudur Rahman Manna said the organisation is still reviewing its performance before deciding on its future direction.

"We are currently reviewing the election results and assessing the overall situation," he told The Business Standard. "We need more time for that process."

Asked about the party's future strategy, Manna declined to elaborate, saying only that Nagorik Oikya intends to remain in electoral politics.

"We will participate in elections again," he said. "But regarding our overall strategy and how we will proceed politically, we have not yet finalised anything."

Manna also questioned aspects of the post-election process.

"The voting process was conducted fairly," he said. "However, the announcement of the results was not conducted as fairly."

He added that it was still too early to draw firm conclusions.

"One hundred days is not enough to fully understand what has happened."

Despite differences in ideology, organisation and resources, the parties visited by TBS shared a common ground: none spoke as though they were preparing to leave politics. 

Instead, almost every conversation centred on what comes next—strengthening district committees, recruiting new members, contesting local government elections and preparing for another attempt at Parliament.

The challenges they face, however, are substantial.

The difficulties confronting Bangladesh's smaller political parties are not unique to the 2026 election. Parliamentary elections over the past two decades reveal a remarkably consistent pattern of political concentration.

In 2008, 38 registered parties contested the election, yet around 30 failed to win a single parliamentary seat. In 2018, around 31 of the 39 participating parties were left without representation. The 2014 election, shaped by a boycott from major opposition parties, produced a different electoral landscape but still left several participating parties outside Parliament.

The 2026 election followed the same trajectory. Of the 51 registered parties that contested, more than 40 failed to secure a single seat.

The figures illustrate a recurring feature of Bangladeshi politics: while dozens of parties remain active, parliamentary representation continues to be concentrated among only a few dominant political forces.

Political scientist Rounaq Jahan made a similar observation in her 2014 book Political Parties in Bangladesh. She argued that although the country has maintained a multiparty system, electoral competition has increasingly revolved around a small number of major parties and alliances. Smaller organisations continue to organise meetings, mobilise supporters and contest elections, yet many struggle to convert that activity into parliamentary representation.

Asif M Shahan, associate professor of Development Studies at the University of Dhaka, believes the future of these parties will largely depend on how Bangladesh's democratic competition evolves.

If elections continue under the first-past-the-post system with stable competition among a few major political blocs, he said, voters are likely to consolidate behind larger parties viewed as capable of forming governments.

"In that reality, many of the smaller parties may become irrelevant or eventually merge with larger parties," he said to TBS.

Asif Shahan believes survival is still possible for parties with clear ideological identities and strong organisational discipline.

"Their key challenge is whether they can reach people, mobilise them and, most importantly, transform them into voters," he said. "If they can develop an adaptive strategic plan, they will survive and flourish. If they fail to do so, they will become completely irrelevant."

Political analyst, writer and researcher Altaf Parvez argues that the predicament of smaller parties cannot be understood through election results alone.

According to him, many represent social groups, regional interests or marginalised communities whose concerns often receive little attention from mainstream political actors. The problem, he said, is that electoral competition has increasingly become centred on larger identity-based contests, leaving less space for issue-based politics.

"Many parties exist because society itself is diverse," he said. "There are different social groups, classes and marginalised populations whose concerns are not always reflected by the major parties."

Parvez believes the greatest weakness of many smaller parties is strategic rather than financial.

"Their biggest crisis is not money but strategic immaturity," he said. "Their weakness lies in alliance-building. Many smaller parties are unable to cooperate even when they share similar interests or objectives."

Without broader cooperation, he argued, many risk remaining politically active but electorally marginal.

That reality was visible throughout a week spent moving between party headquarters across Dhaka.