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The Bangladesh Labour Party has urged the Election Commission not to announce the schedule for local government elections until voting rights through postal ballots are ensured for eligible Bangladeshis living abroad.
A party delegation made the demand during a meeting with Chief Election Commissioner AMM Nasir Uddin at the Election Commission headquarters on Wednesday.
The delegation submitted a 10-point memorandum outlining its proposals for enabling expatriate Bangladeshis to vote in local government elections.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Labour Party Chairman Mostafizur Rahman Iran said the party had urged the commission to ensure postal voting for eligible expatriate voters in all tiers of local government elections.
He said the schedule for local polls should not be announced until arrangements are in place for expatriates to cast their votes by post.
The party’s proposals include using the IT-supported postal voting system developed for national elections to facilitate voting by expatriate citizens in local polls. Bangladesh’s Representation of the People Order now provides for Bangladeshi voters living abroad to vote by postal ballot in parliamentary elections.
The party also called for verifying expatriate voters’ National Identity Card and voter information and linking them accurately to their registered voter areas, wards and respective local government institutions.
It proposed secure and auditable systems for online registration, identity verification, ballot delivery and return, ballot storage and counting.
The party also called for measures to prevent double voting by ensuring that a voter who casts a ballot by post cannot vote again in person in Bangladesh.
It urged the EC to review and amend relevant laws and regulations where necessary to provide a clear legal framework for expatriate postal voting in local elections.
The 10-point proposal also includes providing voter-registration and voting assistance through Bangladesh missions and consulates abroad and publishing a time-bound roadmap for implementing expatriate voting.
The party suggested that postal voting could initially be introduced on a pilot basis in a limited number of local government institutions before being expanded nationwide.
The EC had earlier said it was preparing to use postal ballots for voters living both inside and outside Bangladesh in local government elections.
The commission’s timeline for the local government polls has remained unsettled. On September 22, the EC indicated that elections would not be held in November or December, after earlier preparations had targeted those months.
