MOHIUDDIN ALAMGIR and AHMED DEEPTO

The Election Commission’s first-ever initiative to digitally register Bangladeshi expatriates and allow them to vote through postal ballots has sparked controversy, with the BNP raising concerns over the process.

Over the past three days, two BNP delegations met Chief Election Commissioner AMM Nasir Uddin to express reservations about how the initiative is being carried out.

After one such meeting, BNP Standing Committee member Salahuddin Ahmed said the party has “serious concerns” and questioned the role of officials overseeing the process.

Referring to social media videos, he alleged that batches of 200–300 ballots were being delivered to a single address, even though each postal ballot should have been sent individually to the designated voter.

He also claimed that the process seemed to favour a particular party and demanded clarification on how ballots are being prepared, dispatched, and collected abroad.

On Tuesday, a video showing 160 postal ballot envelopes in a room in Bahrain went viral. It was recorded while the envelopes were being sorted for distribution.

Asked about the incident, EC Secretary Akhtar Ahmed said the Bangladeshi ambassador in Bahrain was investigating and insisted that none of the envelopes had been opened. Bahrain postal authorities are also reviewing whether proper procedures were followed in delivering the ballots, he added.

In a press release, the EC explained that on January 11, the Bahrain postal service contacted several expatriate voters to deliver the ballots. As they were at work, they requested postal officials hand over the envelopes to a colleague living in the same area.

Later, 129 undelivered envelopes were returned to the embassy, which, the EC said, would be delivered individually

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