The amount, however, does not include the cost of printing voters' application forms, purchasing other materials and compiling the received information for updating the existing voter list.

The EC Secretariat will have to spend more money to print the updated voter list, officials said.

The EC earlier prepared and published a draft of a fresh voter list with a cost of Tk 43 crore. But the Supreme Court on May 23 declared the draft list illegal as it was prepared ignoring the High Court directives that asked the EC to update the existing voter list.

Officials at the EC Secretariat said the newly allocated fund will be disbursed in a couple of days.

Tk 1,500 was allocated for each of the clerks temporarily appointed at the offices of local election officials while Tk 1,000 as remuneration for each of the assistant officials who worked for a month to update the voter list by visiting door to door.

Tk 1,000 was allocated for each of 6273 assistant registration officers for publicity campaign urging people to register names as voters.

Besides, the EC Secretariat has allocated Tk 5,000 for conveyance of each registration officer, Tk 1,500 for each assistant registration officers, and Tk 3,000 for each upazila election officer.

As many as 1,35,639 assistant officials, who are mostly teachers, were recruited for updating the voter list by visiting door to door. The temporarily appointed staff have resented arranging 'very poor' remuneration for their task.

A total of 6,273 assistant registration officers and 83 district election officers, who have been recruited as registration officers, are monitoring the task of updating the voter list.

The secretary of the EC Secretariat, Abdur Rashid Sarkar, provided journalists with the accounts of allocation of the money to meet the expenditure for the field level task.

Tk 20,000 was allocated for each of 83 district election officers' offices, Tk 5,000 for each assistant registration officers' office, and Tk 10,500 for each upazila election office.

Besides, the EC Secretariat has allocated Tk 5,000 for each of the offices of divisional commissioners and deputy commissioners, Tk 10,000 for each of nine divisional election offices, Tk 5,000 for each upazila nirbahi officers, cantonment executive officers and regional officers of city corporations. The officials were assigned to monitor the task of updating the voter list.

The EC secretariat also allocated an amount between Tk 7,000 and 15,000 for each of the district election officers for transportation cost of forms and other materials from Dhaka to the districts level and Tk 2,000 for each of upazila election officers for transportation cost of forms and materials from the district level to upazila.