DHAKA - The restoration of democracy in Bangladesh is a ‘positive development’ for the entire South Asian region, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee said here.

Chatterjee, who arrived here Saturday on a three-day visit, praised the landslide victory of the centrist and left-of-centre grand alliance led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

‘People of the whole world are happy over the victory of the grand alliance that leads the country in restoring democracy,’ the speaker of the Indian parliament’s lower house was quoted as saying after his arrival here at the head of a six-member parliamentary delegation.

Chatterjee offered to train Bangladesh’s parliamentarians, many of them first termers, during a meeting with Hasina.

Both South Asian neighbours have common parliamentary traditions, following the Westmister-style parliamentary democracy.

Save aberrations like brief periods of presidential system and military-led or military-guided regimes, Bangladesh has retained the parliamentary system.

There was no parliament for two years, between November 2006 and December 2008, when the country was ruled by a military-backed caretaker government.

Chatterjee and his colleagues are here at the invitation of Speaker Abdul Hamid of Bangladesh Parliament.