Over 7 lakh expatriates, 6,284 prisoners completed registration to vote

More than 7.72 lakh expatriate Bangladeshis have completed registration to vote through the postal ballots in the upcoming national election and the referendum.

A total of 772,542 expatriate Bangladeshis registered from 122 countries to vote through the postal ballots in the election, according to the statistics of the Election Commission.

Besides, 761,141 voters including 6,284 prisoners completed registration from inside Bangladesh to vote through the postal ballots.

The registrants from Bangladesh also included 575,200 government employees posted outside their respective constituencies, 169,642 polling personnel and 10,010 Ansar and VDP members, and the rest five ones are not defined under any specific category.

Altogether, 1,533,683 voters including 252,246 females registered under both the Out-Of-Country (OCV) and In-Country Postal Voting (ICPV) systems.

District-wise registration:

District-wise data show that the highest number of postal voters registered to vote in Cumilla (112,090), followed by Dhaka (108,756), Chattogram (95,297), Noakhali (61,251), Chandpur (46,667), Sylhet (45,806), Mymensingh (44,076), Tangail (40,282), Feni (40,197) and Brahmanbaria (40,182).

Other districts with notable numbers include Lakshmipur (32,980), Jashore (30,228), Barishal (29,477), Cox’s Bazar (28,734), Kishoreganj (28,639), Khulna (24,986), Bogura (24,569), Munshiganj (24,276), Narayanganj (24,260) and Moulvibazar (23,798).

Constituency-wise registration:

In terms of constituencies, the highest number of postal voters registered in Feni-3 (16,093), followed by Chattogram-15 (14,301), Cumilla-10 (13,977), Noakhali-1 (13,658), Noakhali-3 (12,829), Feni-2 (12,797), Cumilla-11 (12,583), Sylhet-1 (12,458), Cumilla-5 (12,373) and Cumilla-6 (11,943).

Expatriate registration by country:

Among expatriate voters, the highest registrations came from Saudi Arabia (239,186), followed by Malaysia (84,292), Qatar (76,139), Oman (56,207), UAE (38,574), Kuwait (35,386), UK (32,414), USA (31,064), Italy (24,444), Bahrain (19,719), Singapore (18,129), Canada (14,681), South Korea (11,702), Australia (11,158), Maldives (9,173), Japan (8,892), France (8,399), Portugal (8,232), Germany (6,063) and South Africa (5,445).

The figures further show that 3,660 expatriate voters registered from Spain, 2,350 from Finland, 2,118 from Poland, 2,011 from China, 1,834 from Sweden, 1,554 from Ireland, 1,506 from Brunei, 1,270 from Denmark, 1,125 from Greece and 1,104 from New Zealand.

Other countries include Turkey (1,077), Egypt (1,039), Romania (1,029), Cyprus (892), Mauritius (801), Iraq (675), the Netherlands (622), Mozambique (559), Libya (545), Belgium (473), Kyrgyzstan (461), Austria (440), Brazil (429), Russia (408), India (353), Hong Kong (China) (346), Cambodia (341), Croatia (324), Switzerland (320) and Jordan (303).

Registrations from the remaining countries were below 100 each, as per the statistics.

Postal voting system:

Though the postal balloting system has been in the laws for a long time, it was never practiced in the previous elections.

This is the first time the Election Commission has introduced an effective IT-supported hybrid postal balloting system.

The Election Commission opened the ‘Postal Vote Bd’ app for the Out-of-Country Voting (OCV) on November 19 and for the In-Country Postal Voting (ICPV) on December 17.

On December 11, it announced the schedule to arrange the 13th parliamentary election and the referendum on the July National Charter (Constitutional Reform) Implementation Order simultaneously on February 12 next.

According to the election schedule, the deadline for the submission of nomination papers was December 29, while the last date for the withdrawal of candidature is January 20. The election campaign will start on January 22 and continue till 48 hours before the balloting period (7:30am on February 10)