Expatriates have sent home nearly 140,000 postal ballots.

Expatriates registered through the “Postal Vote BD” app for the 13th Jatiya Sangsad (JS) election and the referendum have started returning their ballots.

As of Friday night, 139,763 ballots cast by expatriate voters had reached Bangladesh, according to Salim Ahmad Khan, Team Leader of the OCV-SDI Project on expatriate voter registration.

He said that by 3:30 pm on Friday, a total of 766,862 ballot papers had been sent to the addresses of expatriate voters. Of these, 516,007 voters received their ballots, 454,587 cast their votes, and 406,564 submitted their ballots through post offices or letter boxes abroad.

Postal voting has also been extended to voters within Bangladesh. The Election Commission (EC) said ballot papers were dispatched to 269,000 domestically registered postal voters (ICPV) via the app. By 3:30 pm Friday, 3,748 had received their ballots, 2,422 had voted, and 1,149 had returned their ballots through post offices or letter boxes.

Salim Ahmad Khan added that a total of 1,533,684 voters at home and abroad registered through the app to take part in the 13th JS election and the referendum.