More than 273,000 Bangladeshi expatriates are yet to cast their postal ballots, with six days left before the February-12 national election and referendum, officials said.
The Election Commission has sent the ballots to 767,188 registrant expatriates staying in 123 foreign countries through the postal services.
Of them, 12,170 ballots couldn’t be supplied due the voters’ address related problems and the ballots finally returned back to Bangladesh.
Among the rest 755,018 postal ballots, 481,725 expatriates already completed their voting process, while 273,293 others have not yet to exercise their voting rights till 3pm on Thursday (February 05) in the upcoming elections, according to the statistics of the Election Commission.
Even 228,973 expatriates still didn't receive the ballots in different countries. Most of the ballots that still have not been received might not return to the returning officers concerned within the stipulated time of 4:30pm on February 12 next, said EC officials.
Over 4 lakh expats cast votes through postal ballot till 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.
“A total of 766,862 postal ballots reached different destinations throughout the world for Out-of-Country Voting (OCV) and of them, 526,045 ballots were already received by the registered expatriates in various countries,” said Brig Gen (retd) Saleem Ahmad Khan, Team Leader of the Election Commission’s OCV-ICPV project on Thursday.
Among them, 447,346 ballots were already dropped in post offices or postal boxes by the expatriates in different countries. But the returning officers so far received only 120,802 ballots sent by the expatriates.
Besides, the Election Commission 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.
The Commission has sent a total of 760,898 ballots to different destinations under the In-Country Postal Voting (ICPV) since the distribution of the postal ballots.
‘We’ve taken risk of hybrid postal balloting with courage’, says CEC Nasir
Of the ballots, 291,294 ones were received by designated voters, while 228,184 voters already cast their votes and the returning officers concerned received 29,244 returned postal ballots under IPCV.
The Election Commission on December 11 last announced the election schedule to arrange the 13th parliamentary election and the referendum on the July National Charter (Constitutional Reform) Implementation Order simultaneously on February 12, 2026.