Over 7.17 lakh voters register for 13th national election

A total of 717,217 voters have so far registered their names to cast their votes in the upcoming 13th national parliament election and referendum through postal ballot, Election Commission (EC) said.

Apart from expatriate Bangladeshis, government officials and employees engaged in electoral duties, as well as government employees residing outside their designated voting areas, are registering through the Postal Vote BD app.

The EC has already begun dispatching postal ballots to expatriate voters worldwide.

Salim Ahmad Khan, team leader of the Out of Country Voting System and Implementation (OCV-SDI) project, confirmed that postal ballots have been sent to 22,888 expatriate voters in different countries in the last six days.

Data available on the EC website at 12 noon today (Thursday) shows that 659,356 are male and 57,859 are female voters have registered their names.

Among expatriate voters, Saudi Arabia tops the list with 154,692 registered voters. Next is Qatar with 57,316, Oman with 43,206, Malaysia with 40,333, the United Arab Emirates with 30,662 and the United States with 25,500 registered voters.

Within the country, 186,305 voters have registered under the ‘In Country Postal Vote’ category.

District-wise registration figures show Cumilla leading with 66,592 registered voters, followed by Dhaka (58,585), Chittagong (57,458), Noakhali (38,118), Sylhet (28,067) and Chandpur (26,356).

At the constituency level, Feni-3 recorded the highest number of registrations with 10,779 voters. Other notable constituencies include Chittagong-15 with 9,410 voters, Cumilla-10 with 8,935 and Noakhali-1 with over 8,800 registered postal voters.

The EC has been dispatching ballots in phases to various countries. Over the past week, ballots have been sent to countries including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Oman, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Italy, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea and several European and Middle Eastern countries.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission has extended the registration deadline up to December 31, 2025.