The Election Commission said nearly 659,030 were eligible to cast their postal votes from tomorrow to November 5 with November 7 as an additional day for postal voting for those who had failed to cast their votes earlier.

Election Commission Director Channa P. De Silva said the EC had initially set aside October 31 and November 1 for public servants and November 4 and 5 for police and armed forces personnel and public servants deployed on election duty.

He said the EC had received 77,871 applications for postal voting but 58,841 were rejected for various reasons.

Postal voting will be held at government offices, divisional and district secretariats with an executive officer of the respective public institution serving as the presiding officer at each of the voting centres.

Meanwhile, PAFFREL Executive Director Rohana Hettoarachchi said though relatively peaceful in comparison to previous PC polls, the NGO had received more than 1,000 complaints of election-related violence.

He said PAFFREL would deploy some 1,000 observers to monitor the postal voting while the Center for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) said it had deployed 400 volunteers countrywide for this purpose. (Sandun A Jayasekera)