Dhaka: Election Commission (EC) has issued a special circular outlining the procedures to be followed after the receipt of the postal ballots by the Returning Officer (RO).
According to Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha, the circular contains detailed guidelines on the preservation and counting of postal ballots for the forthcoming 13th national parliamentary election and the referendum.
The circular mandates that postal ballots must reach the concerned RO by 4:30 pm on polling day, February 12, to be counted. Any ballots received after this time will not be scanned or counted and will be kept separately as rejected ballots. The software developed for postal voting enables the RO to view the overall number of voters registered and the votes cast via postal ballots for each parliamentary constituency.
For every 400 registered postal voters, each constituency’s RO will use one ballot box, which must be labeled with a sticker bearing the constituency number and name. Postal ballots will start arriving at the RO office from January 21, the day of symbol allocation. Ballot boxes for storing these ballots must be prepared by this date or the following day.
To ensure transparency, the RO will notify candidates or their agents in writing about the date and time for sealing the ballot boxes. On the appointed day, in the presence of attendees, four seals or locks will be affixed to each box. The numbers of each box and seal will be read aloud for verification.
An officer will be assigned to receive and preserve postal ballots from the postal department, assisted by necessary staff for scanning and related tasks. Upon receiving the ballots, the officer will scan the QR code on each envelope and securely store them in designated boxes according to the constituency. QR code scanning will generate constituency-wise lists of distributed and received ballots in Form-12.
If a duplicate QR code appears during scanning, the RO will cancel the ballot, and the envelope will be preserved separately without being opened. The Election Commission will provide essential scanning equipment for this process.
Voters are instructed to use the Postal Vote BD app to scan the QR code on the envelope upon receipt. Failure to do so will result in the ballot not being recognized in the system and being deemed invalid. These ballots will be preserved separately with proper records maintained.
For the counting process, a Presiding Officer will be appointed per constituency, with additional Polling and Assistant Officers appointed based on the number of ballots. Candidates, polling agents, journalists, and observers will be allowed during counting following the same rules as other polling centers.
The Presiding Officer will record election results in Form-16A and referendum results in Form-4, publishing them and providing copies to candidates and officials present. The RO will announce consolidated results from general and postal ballots in Form-18 for the election and Form-7 for the referendum.
Salim Ahmad Khan, Team Leader of the ‘OCV-SDI’ project, informed BSS that most postal ballots have reached expatriate voters, who are actively participating in the election. A total of 1,533,683 voters, including expatriates, have registered for the election and referendum.