Over 43.68 lakh new voters were registered on the draft electoral roll last year, Election Commission Secretary Sirazul Islam said yesterday.

Of them, over 22.97 lakh are male and more than 20.70 lakh female.

The new voters will be on the electoral roll on top of the existing 9.62 crore voters, Islam told reporters at the EC Secretariat.

The commission on July 25 last year started updating the roll across the country which continued till the end of the year.

Apart from registering new voters, the EC also dropped the names of 7.35 lakh dead voters from the electoral roll.

The draft of the updated electoral roll will be made available to public at the union parishad, municipality, upazila and district election offices.

People will be able to file complaints or make recommendations for changes to the list within January 17. The EC will dispose of the complaints or make changes, if necessary, by January 22.

The final updated voter list will be published on January 31, said the EC secretary.

For the first time, the commission last year collected data of citizens aged 15 and above. But only those who were born on or before January 1, 1998 were included in the electoral roll.

The data of under-18 citizens would be used to prepare their national identity (NID) cards, said EC officials.

Earlier, the EC used to collect data of citizens aged 18 or above.