Dhaka, Dec 21 (V7N) — The Election Commission (EC) has begun sending postal ballots to expatriate Bangladeshi voters who registered through the Postal Vote BD mobile application to exercise their voting rights in the 13th national parliamentary election and the upcoming referendum.

Postal ballots were dispatched on Friday, December 19, and Saturday, December 20, to a total of 41,543 expatriate voters across 10 countries, confirmed Salim Ahmad Khan, Team Leader of the Out of Country Voting System and Implementation (OCV-SDI) project, which oversees expatriate voter registration.

He said the distribution of postal ballots officially began on Friday evening, with ballots sent to voters in three countries on Friday and seven more countries on Saturday. The process is being carried out in phases to ensure timely delivery and transparency.

According to EC officials, on Friday evening postal ballots were sent to expatriate Bangladeshis living in Australia, the United Kingdom, and Malaysia. Among these, 892 ballots were sent to Australia, 573 to the United Kingdom, and 6,246 to Malaysia.

On Saturday evening, ballots were dispatched to seven additional countries. These included 8,480 ballots 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.

Salim Ahmad Khan said the Election Commission will allocate election symbols to candidates on Wednesday, January 21. Once the symbols are finalized, voters will be notified through the app or the EC’s official website. Expatriate voters will then be able to log in to the Postal Vote BD app to view the list of candidates for their respective constituencies and cast their votes by marking a tick or cross next to the chosen candidate’s symbol on the ballot paper, following the prescribed guidelines.

He clarified that if any expatriate voter casts a vote before the official symbol allocation, provided the voter was already certain about the candidate, the vote will not be considered invalid. However, voters are encouraged to cast their votes after the symbol allocation to avoid confusion.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission reported that as of 7:30 pm on Saturday, a total of 540,610 voters had registered through the Postal Vote BD app to participate in the election and referendum. In addition to expatriate Bangladeshis, government employees assigned election duties and those posted outside their registered constituencies are also registering through the app.

The initiative marks a significant step toward expanding voting access and ensuring broader participation of overseas and out-of-area voters in Bangladesh’s electoral process.

END/RKB/SMA/