140,000 expatriate postal ballots reach Bangladesh ahead of polls

A ballot will only be counted if it reaches the returning officer by 4:30pm on election day

Nearly 140,000 postal ballots cast by expatriate Bangladeshis have reached the country ahead of the 13th parliamentary polls scheduled for Feb 12.

Salim Ahmad Khan, team leader of the Election Commission’s (EC) OCV-SDI project, said that by 3:30pm on Friday, they had received 139,763 postal ballots.

The postal ballot app shows 454,587 expatriates have already cast their votes. Among them, 406,564 have submitted their ballots to post offices or designated mailboxes of their respective countries after casting their votes.

A referendum on implementing the July Charter will also be held simultaneously with the parliamentary polls on Feb 12. The EC has sent postal ballots to 766,862 expatriates. By Friday afternoon, 516,007 expatriates had received their ballots.

The EC has asked the expatriates to cast their votes and submit the ballots to the nearest post office “as soon as possible”. A ballot will only be counted if it reaches the returning officer by 4:30pm on the polling day in the country.

This year, about 1.53 million voters from home and abroad registered to vote by post, more than half of whom are expatriates.

Alongside overseas Bangladeshis, three categories of voters within the country have also registered through the “Postal Vote BD” app -- people engaged in election duties, government employees working outside their registered constituencies, and voters in legal custody.