Distribution of the application forms and collection of the filled ones, both will be done by the assistant officials through door to door visits after July 20 while people simultaneously have the option of going to local election offices to collect the forms and to submit them after filling those up.

But in absence of a procedure to verify the authenticity of the applications, many field level election officials fear that the accuracy of the voter list may be compromised as no one will be appointed to scrutinise the information provided on the forms.

"We will have nothing to do if an assistant official collects and submits a fake application for inclusion or deletion of a name on the voter list. We will be compelled to register people as voters or delete names from the existing list based on the provided information as we have no scope to examine the authenticity of the applications," a district election officer told The Daily Star yesterday.

Besides, more or less one lakh assistant officials, who will be recruited by July 20, will face enormous difficulties in accomplishing the task in 20 days. During the EC's previous attempt to prepare a fresh voter list, about 2.75 lakh manpower were employed and three months were afforded to get the job done, after which the EC also published a draft list, said election officials.

According to the Manual for Voter Registration and Preparation of a Voter List published by the EC, enumerators should go from door to door and collect information about prospective voters using only one type of form. The supervisors should then examine the information collected by the enumerators by going from door to door again and assistant registration officers should also examine at least random ten percent of the collected information.

Then a draft voter list should be published for people's inspection and for inviting claims and objections about it. The updating authorities then should settle the claims and objections. Then the final voter list should be published.

Legal and election experts are saying that the same procedure should be followed by the EC in the current task of updating the existing voter list.

But the EC's latest procedure for updating the voter list although incorporates door to door visits, it has no provision for examining the information provided in the applications for inclusions or deletions of names.

The assistant officials will be the final authorities regarding inclusions and deletions of names and they will have to visit many areas within 20 days to complete the task.

The EC already wasted six months ignoring the January 4 High Court directives that had asked the EC to update the existing voter list. Even after the May 23 Supreme Court verdict, the EC initiated a procedure that empowered the EC officials to update the voter list sitting in the offices of different local governments, but the procedure completely failed to get response from the people in the last 10 days.

The election officials said the task may suffer from shortage of manpower as only about a lakh assistant officials will be recruited across the country and they will have to distribute and collect at least four types of forms for inclusions and deletions of names.

Apart from manpower shortage, the people will not be entitled to scrutinise whether any fake voter is enlisted, and prospective voters will not get the chance to inspect whether their own names are enlisted correctly as the EC remains rigid on its position not to publish a draft list.

The chief election commissioner (CEC) on Sunday again declared that the EC will not publish a draft voter list although the election officials said the EC should decide to publish a draft list.

Apart from the legal experts who observed that the entire procedure will become illegal again unless a draft voter list is published, Law Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Moudud Ahmed on Sunday also said publication of a draft list is a must.

But the CEC on Sunday claimed that the procedure initiated by the EC does not require publishing of a draft voter list.