While the Election Commission cannot take any steps without the dissolution of the Parliament, it would take the EC a period of between two to three months to conduct a full-fledged general election in the country.

As the situation stands, Indian public opinion is not in favour of going through a general election yet again. Hectic efforts are also on by political parties to work out a solution that does not involve going back to the electorate.

Election Commission officials are reluctant to make a statement even on a possible time-frame for holding the polls, since they fear that any comment at this juncture could be misconstrued.

But there are signs that Nirvachan Sadan is gearing up for the eventuality of holding polls by June or July, though the factthat the monsoon would be in full swing over large parts of the country may lead to a shift in the dates by a couple of weeks. According to Rashtrapati Bhavan sources, Chief Election Commissioner M S Gill had a meeting with President K R Narayanan on Thursday. Earlier, the EC had announced that nine states are due to have state assembly elections between the last quarter of this year and the first quarter of next year. The three-member Election Commission had taken a decision to club these nine states together and hold the elections either simultaneously or in two phases by the end of the year. The states due for Assembly elections are Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, Sikkim, Orissa, Arunachal Pradesh and Bihar. Since President's rule in Goa expires by August this year, polls would have to be held here as well.

Involving the services of around nearly half a million civil servants and paramilitary personnel, a general election today would cost anywhere between Rs 850 crore to Rs 1,000 crore.The February 1998 polls had cost the exchequer close to Rs 800 crore.

An electorate of over 600 million voters had cast their votes in around 900,000 polling stations in the country last time round.

The six to twelve week period is required for a number of administrative tasks, temporary transfer of personnel, printing of ballot papers, setting up of booths, security arrangements, and movement of paramilitary forces to ensure smooth conduct of the polls. But since the entire drill was carried out just over a year ago, the arrangements should go through in a repeat of the 1998 exercise.

The EC has already ordered a special revision of the electoral rolls in different parts of the country so as to update the electoral rolls and make them as correct as possible and to include new voters who are eligible to vote. But this was described as a routine procedure of bringing the electoral rolls upto date, carried out without any bearing on the ongoing political developments.