A group of Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers has urged local LDP chapters to revoke local assembly resolutions that favored a bill to give permanent non-Japanese residents voting rights in local elections.

The group, led by former Justice Minister Seisuke Okuno, an LDP House of Representatives member, sent letters urging the party's prefectural chapters to reconsider and retract the resolutions, which were adopted by prefectural and municipal assemblies, group officials said Friday.

The letters include reference documents aiming to promote deeper understanding of the bill and pointing out constitutional problems with it, they said.

The bill was presented to a Diet committee in the previous extraordinary session, which ended Dec. 1.

But the ruling coalition, the LDP, New Komeito and the New Conservative Party, decided to carry the bill over to the regular Diet session that starts in late January, as they could not build a solid consensus, particularly within the LDP.

New Komeito, the main promoter of the bill, has pressured the LDP to realize the legislation.

Some 1,500 of the more than 3,200 prefectural and municipal assemblies across Japan have adopted resolutions favoring the bill. The Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly was among them.

The combined population of the municipalities accounts for more than 70 percent of Japan's total population, giving lawmakers supporting the bill good reason to try and pass the legislation.

The letters claim, "There is an upsurge of opposition among the Japanese people, and an overwhelming majority of LDP members expressed clear opposition at the party's Research Commission on the Election System."

The bill aims to grant foreigners with permanent residency the right to vote in gubernatorial, local assembly and mayoral elections. There are about 630,000 permanent foreign residents in Japan, many of them Koreans who were born in Japan.

Earlier this year, South Korean President Kim Dae Jung urged Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori to enact the bill by the end of the year.