A total of 401,460 postal ballots from expatriate voters have so far reached Bangladesh for the upcoming 13th Jatiya Sangsad Election and Referendum, according to officials involved in the process.
Salim Ahmad Khan, team leader of the OCV-SDI project on expatriate voter registration, told BSS that 766,862 ballots had been dispatched to expatriates through the Postal Vote BD app by 9:30am.
Of these, 526,498 voters have received their ballots and 482,817 have already cast their votes. He added that 449,006 expatriates have submitted their ballots to postal authorities in their respective countries.
So far, returning officers in Bangladesh have received 124,746 of those ballots, he said.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission has started sending postal ballots to voters residing inside the country. Commission data show ballots have been sent to 694,146 registered domestic voters, of whom 324,020 had received their ballots by 9:30am Thursday.
Among them, 259,394 voters have cast their votes, 213,697 have submitted ballots to post offices or mailboxes, and returning officers have received 30,706 ballots.
Salim Ahmad Khan said a total of 1,533,684 voters, both at home and abroad, have registered on the app to exercise their franchise through postal ballots in the 13th parliamentary election and referendum.
