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Thursday, October 18, 2007

[ALOCHONA] NRBS: Possible voting rights in the UK

EC to hold talks in UK on enrolling expatriates as voters
Courtesy New Age 18/10/07

 

The Election Commission will initiate dialogues with expatriate Bangladeshis in the United Kingdom on the second week of November to assess the possibility of registering them as voters.

Election commissioners Muhammed Sohul Hussain and M Sakhawat Hussain will participate in the dialogue to be held in London, Manchester, Birmingham, and Edinburgh.

‘In the dialogue sessions, we will examine whether only a few political activists or most of the expatriates are interested to be enrolled as voters,’ Sohul told the media Wednesday.

He said if most of the expatriates were found interested to become voters then the commission would start the process for registering them.

‘Initially we will hold the dialogues in the UK as the highest number of Bangladeshi expatriates live there. The EC will next discuss the ways to enrol expatriates living in other countries,’ Sohul said.

Sohul on Wednesday called on the foreign affairs adviser, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, and discussed with him the EC’s plan to enrol Bangladeshi expatiates in the UK.

‘The adviser assured us of offering all the assistance required to implement the plan. The four meetings will be held under the supervision of the Bangladeshi mission there,’ Sohul said.

The EC recently has decided in principle to allow expatriate Bangladeshis to cast votes in parliamentary elections through postal ballots and register as voters by contacting the Bangladeshi missions abroad. The Bangladeshi citizens living overseas have been demanding including their names on the voters’ roll for a long time.

Sohul said the expatriates could cast their votes by post or coming to the constituencies based on the permanent addresses given in their passports.

 


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