About 580,000 voter registration forms for geographical constituencies for the 1998 Legislative Council elections have been received by the close of a voter registration exercise on January 16, according to the Registration and Electoral Office's figures.

It is estimated that about half of them are from new electors. The remaining forms are mainly reports of change of residential address from people already on the electoral roll.

Registration figures for functional constituencies and the Election Committee subsectors will be released as soon as they are available.