Postal Voting: EC to send SMS to govt officials for reg
Staff Reporter :
The Election Commission (EC) has directed the concerned authorities to send SMS notifications to all government officials and employees, urging them to enroll for voting through postal ballots ahead of the upcoming parliamentary election and the referendum on the July Charter.
The directive was issued through a letter signed on Wednesday by KM Ali Newaz, Additional Secretary of the Election Commission and Project Director of the OCV-SDI project.
According to the letter, government officials and employees working within the country, along with members of the armed forces who receive salaries through the iBAS++ system, will be eligible to cast their votes via an IT-enabled postal ballot after completing registration through the “Postal Vote BD” app.
The registration window will remain open until December 25, 2025.
The 13th parliamentary election and the referendum are scheduled to be held simultaneously on February 12, 2026.
The EC has instructed the relevant authorities to send SMS messages to all civilian and military government officials and employees paid through the iBAS++ system, requesting them to complete their registration within the stipulated deadline.
The SMS will read: “All government officials and employees (military and civilian) are requested to complete registration through the ‘Postal Vote BD’ app by December 25, 2025, to cast votes through IT-supported postal ballots.”
The Commission said postal ballots will be dispatched by mail to the registered voters’ addresses. After voting, voters must return the ballots in the provided envelopes to the respective returning officers.
Although the provision for postal voting has existed in electoral laws for a long time, it has never been implemented in previous elections.
This marks the first time the Election Commission has launched an IT-supported hybrid postal voting system, allowing expatriates, government employees, polling personnel, and individuals in legal custody to exercise their voting rights through digital registration followed by manual voting.
Among them, prospective polling personnel who are not government employees and prisoners will be able to register for postal voting between December 17 and December 25.
So far, 46,701 government officials and employees have registered through the app to vote in the February 12 election since the election schedule was announced on December 11.
The EC also confirmed that instructions regarding this initiative have already been communicated to the Secretary of the Finance Division.
According to the election timetable, the deadline for submitting nomination papers is December 29. Scrutiny will take place from December 30 to January 4, while the last date for withdrawal of candidacy is January 20. Election campaigning will begin on January 22 and continue until 48 hours before polling, which starts at 7:30am on February 10.