Staff Reporter:
The number of voters increased by 18.33 lakh last year, taking the total count to 12.36 crore, according to the draft list published by the Election Commission (EC) on Thursday.
Election Commissioner Brigadier General (retd) Abul Fazal Md Sanaullah disclosed the draft voter list at a press briefing at the Election Commission.
Speaking on the occasion, he said the voter list will be verified so that no question arises about the next general election.
Every year, the draft of the updated voter list is published on 2 January with the final list coming out on 2 March, and the same would be done this year, according the EC.
A major change in this year’s voter list updating process will be door-to-door visits by EC officials to ensure the credibility of the voter list, starting on 20 January, said Sanaullah.
Those who became eligible to vote on 1 January 2025 have now been added to the updated list.
In the updated draft voter list, the number of male voters is 6,33,30,103 and that of female voters 6,03,52,415, and the count of third-gender voters is 994.
Overall, the number of voters has grown by 1.05%.
This year, 13,151 expatriates from seven foreign countries have been included in the draft list.
The EC will receive requests for amending voter information until 17 January and settle the issues by 30 January.
Election Commissioner Sanaullah, however, said the details of the 120 million verified voters will not be disclosed. Only the information of the 1.8 million newly added voters will be made public, he informed.
In response to a question about whether the information of voters registered since 2009 would be verified, he said, “The entire voter list will be published. The list of 120 million voters will be available.
