President Mohammed Sahabuddin has decided to cast his vote by postal ballot in the upcoming national elections, the Election Commission confirmed.

EC secretary Akhtar Ahmed said that the president’s office has already coordinated with the commission while the ballot would be sent to him by post after registration through the official app.

Meanwhile, the EC has begun dispatching postal ballots to voters registered through the ‘Postal Vote BD’ mobile application for the 13th Jatiya Sangsad election and the referendum.

According to Salim  Ahmad Khan, team leader of the expatriate voter registration project OCV-SDI, ballots were sent on Tuesday to 63,600 voters across 18 districts of the country.

He said that the ballots were dispatched in 106 bags on 27 January.

EC data show that 7,61,138 voters have registered through the Postal Vote BD app, including 5,75,200 government employees and 1,69,643 officials assigned election duties.

The registered voters also include 10,010 Ansar and VDP members and 6,285 prison inmates.

As of 10:30am on 27 January, ballots had reached the destination countries of 7,66,862 expatriate voters registered through the app.

Of them, 4,93,920 expatriate voters have received their ballots, 4,25,788 have completed voting, and 3,70,322 have submitted their ballots to the relevant postal offices or mailboxes abroad.

In addition, ballots from 21,508 expatriate voters have already returned to Bangladesh.

Salim said that a total of 15,33,683 voters, including both domestic and expatriate voters, had registered through the Postal Vote BD app to vote in the 13th parliamentary polls and the referendum.