Staff Reporter:
A total of 557,859 voters have so far registered through the “Postal Vote BD” app to exercise their fran-chise in the upcoming 13th Jatiya Sangsad election and referendum.
Alongside expatriate Bangladeshis living in different countries, government employees engaged in elec-tion duties and those staying outside their own voter areas are also registering through the app.
According to the postal voting update published on the Election Commission (EC) website till 12:30 pm yesterday, a total of 557,859 voters have registered through the app so far. Of them, 523,238 are male voters and 34,619 are female voters.
Among expatriates, the highest number of registrations has been recorded from Saudi Arabia with 136,319 voters, followed by Qatar with 51,582, Oman 37,755, Malaysia 35,467, United Arab Emirates 26,418, the United States 23,802, Kuwait 19,679, the United Kingdom 18,479, Singapore 17,059, Italy 13,692 and Canada 11,111 registered voters.
On the other hand, under the in-country postal voting category, 83,082 Bangladeshi voters residing with-in the country have registered through the app till 12:30 pm yesterday.
District-wise registration data show that Cumilla tops the list with 56,889 registered voters, followed by Dhaka with 48,254, Chattogram 47,339, Noakhali 32,745, Sylhet 23,595 and Chandpur with 22,305 registered voters.
Constituency-wise, the highest number of registrations has been recorded in Feni-3 constituency with 8,792 voters. This is followed by Chattogram-15 with 8,075, Noakhali-1 with 7,757, Cumilla-10 with 7,643 and Noakhali-3 with 7,290 voters registering for postal voting.
Meanwhile, the EC has started sending postal ballots to expatriate voters who registered through the “Postal Vote BD” app for the upcoming election and referendum. A total of 41,543 postal ballots have been sent to expatriate voters in 10 countries on Friday and Saturday evenings, Team Leader of the Out of Country Voting System and Implementation (OCV-SDI) project for expatriate voter registration Sal-im Ahmad Khan confirmed.
He said the dispatch of postal ballots to expatriate Bangladeshi voters began from Friday evening, with ballots sent to three countries on Friday and to seven countries on Saturday.
He added that the EC will allocate election symbols to candidates on January 21. Once symbols are allo-cated, voters will be notified through the app or the EC website.
Voters will then be able to log into the “Postal Vote BD” mobile app, view the list of candidates in their respective constituencies and cast their votes by placing a tick or cross mark in the blank space beside the chosen symbol on the ballot paper as per the provided guidelines.
Salim Ahmad Khan said if any expatriate voter casts a vote before symbol allocation, having already confirmed the candidate, the vote will not be cancelled. However, expatriate voters are advised to cast their votes after symbol allocation in line with the rules.
EC officials said that on Friday evening, postal ballots were sent to expatriate Bangladeshis living in Australia, the United Kingdom and Malaysia. Of these, 892 ballots were sent to Australia, 573 to the UK and 6,246 to Malaysia.
On Saturday evening, postal ballots were dispatched to seven countries, including 8,480 to the United States, 681 to China, 1,310 to Kuwait, 2,737 to Qatar, 7,343 to Saudi Arabia, 5,600 to Japan and 7,681 to South Korea.
