Meanwhile, the EC yesterday declared the total number of voters for the ninth parliamentary elections.

The EC sources said Ansar and Village Defence Party (VDP) have sought Tk 53 crore so far while the armed forces and the police have sought Tk 17 crore and 70 crore. The Ministry for Home Affairs gave this primary estimate to the EC secretariat for maintaining law and order during pre- and post-election periods.

The caretaker government has already given Tk 100 crore to the EC and the bulk of it was spent on buying electoral materials and to prepare the voter list.

"We've Tk 100 crore but we need more money," EC Secretary Abdur Rashid Sarkar told newsmen during a briefing at his office yesterday.

"The amount includes the expenses for printing the voter list," said the EC secretary, adding, "We need more money for the election purpose."

The EC yesterday revealed the number of voters in the country following its voter list correction effort conducted during December 8-18.

"The number of voters in the country now stands at 9,30,23, 513," said the EC secretary. The updated voter list had 9,33,04,167 voters. The number of male and female voters is 4,74,69,105 and 4,53,74,000 respectively.

During the correction process of the updated voter list, 11,64,413 new voters were enrolled and 11,41,761 voters were deleted from the list. Therefore, around 25,000 new voters have been enrolled to bring the figure to 9,30,23, 513 after repetitions of names were corrected.

There will be 33,735 voting centres across the country and the number of ballot papers is 8,72,64,706 as 17 candidates have already been elected unopposed.

The EC secretary yesterday said apart from printing the ballot papers, all tasks for holding the elections have been completed. The printing of the ballot papers is currently going on, he added.

He said the printing of the voter list for 300 constituencies has been completed and they have already sent those to the offices of the returning officers.