COLOMBO, Feb 19: Sri Lanka's election chief has said he is still undecided about conducting the April parliamentary polls in the rebel-held areas in the north and east despite the no-conflict situation prevailing there for about 2 years.

Dayananda Dissanayake, Commissioner of Elections, told reporters that he would be taking a decision before April 2. A truce between the government troops and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels has held since February 2002 after over two decades of ethnic bloodshed.

In the northern Jaffna peninsula some 640,000 voters are eligible to vote, out of them over 200,000 people are believed to have been displaced due to the conflict.

Mr Dissanayake expects at least 225,000 Jaffna voters to exercise their franchise on April 2. An estimated 300,000 voters are expected to vote in the rebel-held areas but Mr Dissanayake is yet to make arrangements for the poll there.

The elections chief said conducting the poll in the war-torn areas posed serious problems as there were areas under the Army, the rebels, and in between 'no man's land'.