sakhadib/Bangladesh-Legal-Acts-Dataset

Bangladesh Legal Acts Dataset

A comprehensive database of Bangladesh's legal framework, containing 1484+ acts scraped and processed from the official Bangladesh Laws portal, enhanced with historical government context, legal system context, and comprehensive metadata.

Dataset Overview

• Total Acts: 1,484
• Total Sections: 35,633
• Total Footnotes: 14,523
• Languages: English, Bengali, Mixed
• Format: JSON with structured metadata
• Historical Context: Government periods from 1799-2025
• Legal System Context: Comprehensive legal framework information
• Enhanced Features: Token counts, year standardization, processing metadata
• License: CC-BY 4.0

Citation

If you use this dataset in your research or project, please cite it as:

@misc{adib_sakhawat_2025,
  title     = {Bangladesh Legal Acts Dataset},
  url       = {https://www.kaggle.com/dsv/12511542},
  DOI       = {10.34740/KAGGLE/DSV/12511542},
  publisher = {Kaggle},
  author    = {Adib Sakhawat},
  year      = {2025}
}

Data Processing Pipeline

The dataset has been enhanced through multiple processing stages:

1. Initial Scraping: Raw legal acts data collection
2. Content Cleaning: Text processing and structuring
3. Detailed Fetching: Section-by-section content extraction
4. Data Combination: Merging structured data
5. Enhancement: Token counting and language detection
6. Government Context Integration: Historical government information
7. Legal System Context Addition: Legal framework contextualization
8. Year Translation: Bengali to English numeral conversion
9. Error Recovery: Missing context restoration
10. Token Count Correction: Accurate tokenization across all fields
11. Final Compilation: Comprehensive dataset creation

Individual Act Structure (Enhanced)

{
  "act_title": "The Penal Code, 1860",
  "act_no": "XLV",
  "act_year": "1860",
  "publication_date": "6th October, 1860",
  "language": "english",
  "token_count": 15420,
  "is_repealed": false,
  "sections": [
    {
      "section_title": "Chapter I - Introduction",
      "section_content": "This Act may be called the Penal Code..."
    }
  ],
  "footnotes": [
    {
      "footnote_text": "Extended to Bangladesh by..."
    }
  ],
  "csv_metadata": {
    "act_title_from_csv": "The Penal Code, 1860",
    "is_repealed": false
  },
  "government_context": {
    "government_name": "British Colonial Government",
    "govt_system": "Company Rule",
    "position_head_govt": "Governor-General of India",
    "head_govt_name": "Lord Canning (Charles Canning)",
    "head_govt_designation": "Governor-General of India",
    "how_got_power": "Company appointment",
    "period_years": "1856-1862",
    "years_in_power": 6,
    "context_added_at": "2025-07-19T..."
  },
  "legal_system_context": {
    "legal_framework": "British Colonial Legal System",
    "government_system": "Colonial Administration",
    "policing_system": "Imperial Police System",
    "land_relations": "Colonial Land Revenue System",
    "period": "1858-1947",
    "description": "British Crown rule with colonial administrative framework",
    "context_added_at": "2025-07-19T..."
  },
  "processing_info": {
    "government_context_source": "govt.json lookup",
    "legal_context_source": "bangladesh_legal_systems.json",
    "year_translation": "Original year retained",
    "token_count_method": "Comprehensive field tokenization",
    "last_updated": "2025-07-19T..."
  },
  "source_file": "act-print-11.json",
  "source_url": "http://bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd/act-print-11.html",
  "fetch_timestamp": "2025-07-19 02:45:32"
}

🔍 Data Features

Enhanced Processing

• Missing Data Recovery: Automatically fills gaps using CSV metadata
• Token Counting: Word-level tokenization for all text content including context fields
• Language Detection: Automatic detection of English/Bengali/Mixed content
• Historical Government Context: Matches each act with the government system and leadership at the time of enactment
• Legal System Context: Comprehensive legal framework information for each historical period
• Year Standardization: Bengali to English numeral translation
• Error Recovery: Automated recovery for files with missing contexts
• Metadata Preservation: Maintains source URLs and timestamps

Quality Assurance

• Error Handling: Robust error logging and recovery mechanisms
• Data Validation: Automatic validation of combined datasets
• Progress Tracking: Real-time processing progress with tqdm
• Statistics: Comprehensive processing statistics and distribution analysis
• Batch Processing: Memory-efficient chunked processing
• Comprehensive Logging: Detailed logs for all processing stages

Government Context Features

• Historical Periods: Covers government systems from 1799-2025
• Leadership Information: Includes head of government names and designations
• Power Transitions: Documents how each government came to power
• System Classification: Categorizes different government types (Company Rule, Colonial, Democratic, Military, etc.)
• Temporal Mapping: Precise year-based matching of acts to government periods

Legal System Context Features

• Legal Framework Classification: Comprehensive categorization of legal systems
• Government System Integration: Links legal framework to government structure
• Policing System Context: Historical policing and law enforcement information
• Land Relations Framework: Land ownership and revenue system context
• Temporal Coverage: Complete coverage across all historical periods
• Contextual Descriptions: Detailed explanations of each legal system period

📈 Dataset Statistics

Metric	Value
Total Legal Documents	1,484
Date Range	1799 - 2025
Languages	English, Bengali, Mixed
Total Sections	35,633
Total Footnotes	14,523
Government Periods Covered	50+ historical periods
Legal System Periods	12+ distinct legal frameworks
Government Systems	Company Rule, Colonial, Military, Democratic, etc.
Average Tokens per Act	~2,884
Total Dataset Tokens	2,500,000+
Processing Scripts	10+ specialized processing tools
Processing Time	~30 minutes (complete pipeline)

🛠️ Technical Details

Scraping Process

• Respectful scraping: 300ms delays between requests
• Error resilience: Continues processing despite individual failures
• Memory optimization: Batch processing for large datasets
• Rate limiting: Prevents server overload

Data Processing

• Batch optimization: Processes 50-100 items per batch
• Memory efficiency: Streaming JSON writing for large files
• Unicode support: Full Bengali/English text support
• Incremental processing: Skip already processed files
• Chunked processing: Optimized memory usage for large datasets
• Government context fusion: Efficient lookup-based government matching
• Legal context integration: Temporal period matching algorithms
• Token counting: Regex-based comprehensive tokenization
• Error recovery: Automated detection and correction of processing errors

Processing Pipeline Features

• Modular Design: Each processing stage is independent and reusable
• Progress Tracking: Real-time progress bars and statistics
• Comprehensive Logging: File and console logging for all operations
• Memory Management: Garbage collection and chunked processing
• Error Resilience: Continues processing despite individual file failures
• Statistics Generation: Detailed processing and content statistics

Historical Government Context

The dataset includes comprehensive historical government context for each legal act, covering:

Government Systems Covered

• Company Rule (1799-1858): East India Company administration
• British Colonial Rule (1858-1947): Direct British Crown rule
• Pakistan Period (1947-1971): Dominion and Republic of Pakistan
• Bangladesh Independence (1971-present): Various democratic and military governments

Context Information

• Government system type and duration
• Head of government name and official designation
• Method of acquiring power (election, appointment, coup, etc.)
• Exact period years for historical accuracy

This historical context enables researchers to:

• Analyze legal evolution across different political systems
• Study the impact of government changes on legislation
• Understand the political circumstances surrounding specific laws
• Conduct temporal analysis of legal frameworks

Contributing

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Legal Notice

This dataset contains legal documents from the Bangladesh government. While the data is publicly available, please:

• Verify accuracy for legal purposes
• Check for updates on the official portal
• Respect the original source attribution

License

This work is licensed under CC-BY 4.0.

You are free to:

• Share and redistribute
• Adapt and transform
• Use commercially

With attribution to this repository.

Related Links

• Bangladesh Laws Portal
• Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs
• Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0

Contact

For questions about this dataset, please open an issue in this repository.

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Disclaimer: This is an unofficial compilation. For legal purposes, always refer to the official Bangladesh Laws portal.

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license: cc-by-4.0