Sadrul Ain:
The Election Commission (EC) will publish the final voter list tomorrow, Sunday (March 2).
On the same day, the EC will celebrate National Voters' Day along with publishing the final voter list.
However, the door-to-door voter list update process that began last year will end in June. Despite legal complications, the Election Commission wants to give those who will be voters the opportunity to vote before the election schedule is announced.
The Election Commission announced in a press release that it will celebrate Voters' Day on Sunday through various events.
The organization said that various promotional activities are also being undertaken to encourage citizens to become voters around the day.
The Election Commission published the updated draft voter list on January 2, 2024 of this year.
This added another 1.833 million voters, bringing the total number to 123.7 million. The Election Commission is going to publish the final voter list tomorrow, March 2, after hearing the objections.
However, since the expected number of new voters was not included and the deceased voters were not excluded, the constitutional body began updating the list by going door-to-door from January 20, stating that it was inconsistent.
Those who will be 18 years old on January 1, 2026, are also being included this time.
The Election Commission says that if the update is done correctly, about 6.2 million new voters will be added to the list. As of February 24, 5.492 million citizens, including new voters and excluded voters, have registered. Meanwhile, about 1.7 million have been excluded from the list of deceased voters.
According to the Voters' List Act, the final voter list will be published on March 2 after the annual update. Accordingly, the door-to-door update that began on January 20 is expected to result in the draft of this list being published in January 2026. In that case, if the national election is held in December, the commission will have to vote based on the 2024 list, which will be published on March 2.
Election Commission Senior Secretary Akhtar Ahmed said that amendments will be made to the Voter Registration Act. However, the date by which new voters will be given time will be decided on the basis of consensus.
The EC Secretary also said that a new list will be prepared by June 30.
