Postal ballots dispatched to 677,233 expatriates

A total of 677,233 postal ballots have been dispatched to expatriate voters worldwide for participation in the 13th Jatiya Sangsad election and referendum.

Salim Ahmad Khan, team leader of the Out of Country Voting System and Implementation (OCV-SDI) project on expatriate voter registration, confirmed this information, saying, "They are working to send postal ballots to expatriates by January 10."

According to the Election Commission (EC), a total of 15,33,683 voters have registered through the "Postal Vote BD" app to cast their votes by postal ballot in the 13th Jatiya Sangsad election and referendum.

Of them, 761,141 voters registered under the "In-country postal vote" category inside the country, while 772,542 expatriate voters registered from different countries across the globe.

Salim Ahmad Khan said that symbols will be allocated on January 21 and expressed hope that postal ballots would reach expatriate voters before that time.

Regarding that secrecy of ballots, he said it is the responsibility of expatriates who have received postal ballots to maintain the secrecy of the ballots, adding that the national identity cards (NIDs) of those violating ballot secrecy may be blocked.

EC sources said that postal ballots were sent to 41,464 expatriates in different countries on Tuesday evening. Of them, the highest 17,759 ballots were sent to Singapore, followed by 12,000 to Saudi Arabia.