"We do not agree with the claim," the acting CEC said while talking to journalists at his office after an NDI team along with US Ambassador to Bangladesh Patricia Butenis met him to deliver their survey report.

The US ambassador told journalists that there are excess voters in the voter list but most of them are due to migration and there is absolutely no indication that the excess voters are on the roll due to fraud or manipulation.

The US based organisation NDI's Residential Director Owen Lippert said, "A transparent voters' list would be part of an acceptable election."

"I thought it was crucial that we had spent time with the Election Commission because the survey result is quite encouraging," Butenis told the awaiting newsmen after meeting with the CEC.

"The credibility of the voters' list is the key issue now," she said, adding, "The NDI and we are interested to work with the Election Commission on this voters' list."

"No party will benefit from these excess voters or it could be said that they all [political parties] would suffer equally and there is absolutely no evidence of manipulation. I think that's very encouraging," observed the US envoy.

The NDI on Saturday unveiled the survey report where they said 1.22 crore names registered in the updated voter list are either excess or duplicates.

"Their (NDI) report is not absolutely correct," the acting CEC said adding that the NDI also conducted this kind of survey in 2001 and later admitted there were mistakes in that report.

Mahfuzur said the NDI's claim that there are 1.22 crore excess voters in the list is baseless.

Mahfuzur Rahman urged the NDI team to be more specific so that the Election Commission (EC) could correct the voter list.

He said the EC left no stone unturned to find out the flaws in the voter list.

On the possibility of changes of the election schedule, the acting CEC said, "We did not get any such recommendation from the council of advisers."

Asked if the voter list is error-free, Mahfuzur said it is not that there are no errors in the list and the voter lists of other countries are not flawless either but they can be corrected.

He, however, pointed out that the EC would not be able to correct the errors or duplications in the voter list of 2000, as there is a Supreme Court bar to correcting it.

"We're not saying that the list is completely flawless but we're trying our best to correct the updated list," he said.

Owen Lippert said, "We're not saying that these are fake voters, these are excess and duplicate names, and it's because of migration from village to cities."

"We didn't find any fictitious names in the voters' list," he added replying to a question.

Lippert said the flaws of the list could be addressed by several methods and the EC would make a special effort to address the problem.