Less than 7000 IDPs have registered with the authorities to vote at the presidential elections, claim election monitoring bodies.

There are estimated 160 000 people who are eligible to vote.

“Around 160 000 IDPs are eligible to vote and out of that only 1600 from Jaffna and 5000 from Vavuniya have registered. The IDPs should register before Wednesday in order to vote” said Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE) Spokesman Rajith Keerthi Tennakoon.

“This matter is complicated by the fact that 43% of the people in Vanni have no valid identity cards,” he added.

The government must pursue a more aggressive campaign to register the IDP voters, Tennakoon said. "so far the government had failed to come up with a system to register the IDPs for voting." he told the BBC.

He added that it is difficult to expect these people to take time to fill in and hand over forms when they are struggling to survive.