Postal ballot delivery ‘impossible’ without complete address

Registration activities have been suspended in several countries, including Saudi Arabia

Saleem Ahmad Khan, the team leader of the Out of Country Voting (OCV) System Development & Implementation (SDI) project, has said it will not be possible to send postal ballots to expatriate voters if they do not provide a complete address during online registration.

He said, "The registration activities of expatriates living in Bahrain, Kuwait, Malaysia, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have been suspended because they did not provide a complete address on the Postal Vote BD app.

"It will not be possible to send the postal ballot paper without a correct and complete address."

The “Postal Vote BD” app was inaugurated on Nov 18 for Bangladeshi expatriate voters and three types of persons within the country.

Global region-based registration then began in phases. From the early hours of Nov 20 registration has been possible from any country. This process will continue until 11:59pm on Dec 18.

More than 53,000 expatriate voters had completed registration by 1:30pm on Thursday. Among those registered, 45,000 are men. As a single country, the highest number of registrations, just under 11,000, has come from the United States. This is followed by South Korea, Japan, Canada, Australia and South Africa.

The highest number of registrants by district, 11,475, are originally from Dhaka. Cumilla has 3,832 registrants, Noakhali 3,546, and Chattogram 3,445. However, expatriates from all 64 districts have responded to the registration programme.

By constituency, the highest number of registrants - 1,217 - belong to Noakhali-1. This is followed by Dhaka-18, where 1,147 individuals have already registered. In Sylhet-1 the number stands at 1,123, in Dhaka-10 at 998, Dhaka-8 at 980, and Dhaka-13 at 972.