Bangladesh’s Election Commission on Sunday approved the inclusion of BNP acting chairman Tarique Rahman in the voter list, weeks ahead of the February 12 general election.

A day earlier, the 60-year-old leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) visited the Election Commission (EC) office in Dhaka and provided fingerprints and iris scans for biometric enrollment. He had earlier submitted his voter registration application online.

“The Election Commission has approved the inclusion of Tarique Rahman in the voter list,” Director (Public Relations) and Information Officer of the EC Secretariat Ruhul Amin Mallick told state-run news agency Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS).

Son of former prime minister Khaleda Zia, Rahman, along with his daughter Zamia, completed all procedures for voter registration and the issuance of a National Identity Card (NID) at the EC on Saturday. Following inclusion in the voter list, a new NID number will be generated for both of them.

Bangladesh introduced a voter list with photographs and biometric data in 2008. Rahman, who was a political prisoner then, left for London on September 11, 2008, after his release. As he was abroad at the time, he was not included in the voter list.

Rahman will contest the February 12 election from his ancestral Bogura Sadar (Bogura-6) constituency. BNP leaders have already started collecting nomination papers on his behalf since earlier this month.

Ending a 17-year self-exile, Rahman returned to Bangladesh from London on December 25 to take over the leadership of his party, while his mother Khaleda Zia remains in “extremely critical” condition at a Dhaka hospital.

Earlier on Saturday, the disbanded Awami League party of Zia's rival Sheikh Hasina, whose government was toppled last year after a violent street protest, questioned the legality of including Rahman in the voters’ list after the final list was prepared.

Becoming a new voter is legally prohibited after the announcement of the election schedule, the party said, and it also questioned how the EC functioned on a Saturday, a weekly government holiday.

However, former Election Commission official SM Asaduzzaman, who was director of public relations at the EC Secretariat when the photo voter list and NID system were introduced, said the law allows any eligible citizen to be included in the voter list at any time.