"We know nothing about the progress in preparing the fresh voter list. In fact, we are in the dark as we could not meet in the last two months," Election Commissioner AK Mohammad Ali told The Daily Star yesterday.

"The Election Commission secretary is doing everything in consultation with the chief election commissioner," he added.

However, the chief election commissioner (CEC), who is authorised to convene EC meetings, said he does not know about the present status of the preparatory work for the list. He asked reporters on Thursday to consult the EC secretary.

The EC at its last meeting on August 6 took the 'controversial' decision for preparing a fresh voter list. But election commissioners AK Mohammad Ali and Munsef Ali are still in favour of revising the existing one.

"We did not support the last meeting's decision. Munsef Ali and I had suggested that the voter list should be revised," Mohammad Ali said.

The EC commissioner said he learns everything about the progress of the new voter list from the newspapers. "Everything should be discussed at the Election Commission meetings," he asserted.

He said, "Things were different during the tenure of former chief election commissioner MA Syed, who always discussed issues with other election commissioners.

"If I was not available at office, the then chief election commissioner called me at my home for discussion. We used to meet three to four times a month then."

Election Commissioner Ali has also put his note of dissent in a file on the appointment of assistant registration officers for preparing the voter list.

"I put my opinion in the file that assistant registration officers may be appointed for revising the voter list, not for a fresh one," he said.

EC secretariat officials however said they are making preparation for the fresh voter list. The notice for recruiting about three lakh enumerators and 75,000 supervisors will be issued this week, they added.

"Then we will ask the district election officers to recruit field level officials to prepare the voter list," a senior official yesterday told The Daily Star asking not to be named.

The finance ministry has not yet allocated the fund to the EC for preparing the voter list. The EC on August 13 proposed a budget of Tk 146 crore in this regard.