Staff Reporter:
The Election Commission (EC) has withdrawn region-based timeframes for expatriate Bangladeshis reg-istering as postal voters, allowing them to complete online registration from anywhere in the world at any time starting from Thursday till December 18 next to vote in the upcoming national election and referendum, Senior Secretary Akhtar Ahmed said yesterday.
“Expatriates can register to vote from anywhere in the world anytime from 12:00am after Wednesday midnight,” he told reporters after a meeting with a team from TikTok at the Nirbachan Bhaban in the city.
Chief Election Commissioner AMM Nasir Uddin, election commissioners and EC senior officials were present at the meeting held on Wednesday afternoon.
The TikTok delegation, led by Ferdous Mottakin, Head of Public Policy & Government Relations for South Asia, joined the meeting that focused on ensuring accurate online information and combating mis-information, creating a safe and fact-based digital environment during the upcoming general election.
Akhtar Ahmed said the expatriate voter registration process, launched on November 18, initially divided the world into eight regions and allocated five days for each region. “From now on, those regional re-strictions and five-day timeframes have been removed,” he said.
The EC launched the ‘Postal Vote Bd’ app on November 18 and opened it on November 19 initially for expatriate voters living in 53 countries located in East Asian, South American and African regions ahead of the 13th parliamentary election and the referendum on the July National Charter, both are likely to be held in a single day in early February 2026.
Later, on November 24, the Commission opened the registration process for 16 other countries in North America and Oceania regions, including the USA, Australia and Canada.
Besides, the app was to open for the expats staying in 42 other countries from November 29 to Decem-ber 03, for the Bangladeshis staying in Saudi Arabia from December 04 to 08, the expats in 18 countries from December 09 to 13, for the Bangladeshis in 14 countries from December 14 to 18.
But on Wednesday, the Commission removed the region-based timeframe to open the online registration process for expatriate voters living in 143 countries across the world.
The EC Secretary said the registration process might cause some technical issues. “For example, in some cases OTPs did not reach users — we have identified such problems. Any errors that appear will be ad-dressed immediately,” he said.
He said a mock voting exercise will be held from 8am to 12pm on Saturday at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar Government Girls’ High School in the city.
“Since the national election and referendum will be held on the same day, we want to rehearse the entire process in advance to ensure greater efficiency,” Akhtar Ahmed said.
Reviewing the outcome of the mock voting, the commission would take decisions on whether it needs to increase the number of polling centers, expand coordination, or add more polling booths and manpower, he added.
Noting that the ordinance has recently been issued to hold the referendum, he said the commission has taken advance preparations immediately after getting hints about it.
