As the court sits in the morning, a couple of writ petitions challenging the "unilateral" decision of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) to prepare a fresh electoral roll ahead of next general election will come up to be adjudicated by High Court division of the SC.

On December 15, the High Court deferred the admissibility hearings of the two Public Interest Litigation (PIL) writs till the reopening of the court on January 2, a day after the enumeration of voters was scheduled to begin.

And the nationwide drive for voter-information collection began yesterday as per the schedule, amid the Awami League-led opposition protests.

The cause shown for holding back the hearings was that the copies were not served to the CEC and the Election Commission (EC) secretariat for reply.

Awami League General Secretary Abdul Jalil MP filed one of the writ petitions while his party lawmakers Advocate Rahmat Ali and Asaduzzaman Noor moved another to wage a double-pronged legal battle.

The CEC has been made respondent while Election Commissioners AK Mohammad Ali and M Munsef Ali pro-forma respondents in the cases.

The AL lawmakers also challenged the validity of "controversial" appointments of over three lakh enumerators, supervisors, assistant registration officers, registration officers and upazila election officers by the EC secretariat for accomplishing the task.

The EC yesterday kicked off collecting voter information at grassroots level with a target to publish the final voter list on June 1, 2006.

Dr Kamal Hossain, Barrister M Amir-Ul Islam and Barrister Rokanuddun Mahmud will appear for the petitioners while Khandaker Mahbubuddin Ahmed MP stand for the CEC and the EC secretariat.