United News of Bangladesh

More than 4.25 lakh expatriate Bangladeshis living in different countries across the world have so far cast their votes in the upcoming national election and referendum scheduled for February 12. “As of 10:30am on Tuesday, a total of 425,788 expatriate voters completed their voting process and of them, 370,322 ballot papers have been dropped in post offices and post boxes in different countries across the world,” said Brig Gen (retd) Saleem Ahmad Khan, Team Leader of the Election Commission’s OCV-ICPV project. He said a total of 766,862 postal ballots reached different destinations throughout the world for Out-of-Country Voting (OCV) and of them, 493,920 ballots have already been received by the registered expatriates in various countries. The Election Commission has already received as many as 21,508 returned ballots as of Tuesday morning. Meanwhile, the Commission has sent some 63,600 ballots to 18 districts under the In-Country Postal Voting (ICPV) since the distribution of the postal ballots started on Monday. The EC, headed by Chief Election Commissioner AMM Nasir Uddin, introduced the IT-supported hybrid postal balloting system with the combination of digital registration and manual balloting for the first time in the country for the expatriate Bangladeshis living in more than 120 foreign countries. Many Bangladesh’s journalists face voting exclusion despite new postal ballot system The Commission also is using the new postal balloting system for the government employees working outside their respective constituencies, the polling personnel and the people under legal custody inside Bangladesh. A total of 1533,684 voters registered to vote through the postal ballots under the OCV and ICPV systems. The registrants include 772,542 expatriates and 761,142 government employees, polling personnel and prisoners. Among the 772,542 expatriates, the highest 239,186 were registered from Saudi Arabia, while 84,292 from Malaysia, 76,139 from Qatar, 56,207 from Oman, 38,574 from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), 35,386 from Kuwait, 32,414 from the United States of America (USA), 31,046 from the United Kingdom (UK), 24,444 from Italy, 19,719 from Bahrain, 18,129 from Singapore, 14,681 from Canada, 11,702 from South Korea, 11,158 from Australia, 9,173 from Maldives, 8,892 from Japan, 8,399 from France, 8,232 from Portugal, 6,063 from Germany and 5,445 from South Africa.  The number of registrants from other countries is less than 4,000. Among the voters who registered from inside the country, 575,200 are government employees, 169,643 officers engaged in election duty, 10,010 Ansar and VDP members, 6,285 are prisoners and the rest 240 ones were not approved on different grounds. On December 11, the Election Commission announced the schedule to hold the 13th parliament election and the referendum on the July National Charter (Constitutional Reform) Implementation Order simultaneously on February 12 next.