ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Tuesday appointed returning and polling officers for the upcoming Senate elections. However, the schedule for the election will be announced on February 2. In three separate notifications issued in this regard, ECP appointed four returning officers and 32 polling officers to conduct Senate elections in the National Assembly and the four provincial assemblies. The election will be held to elect two senators from the federal capital, four from the Federally Administrated Tribal Area (FATA), seven on general seats, two on seats reserved for women, two each on reserved technocrat seats from Punjab, Sindh, KP and Baluchistan and on a seat each reserved for each province. The upper house of the parliament comprises 104 members, including 23 each from the four federating units, eight from FATA, and four from the federal capital. The term of a senator is six years. However half of the total number retire after every three years and elections are held for new senators. The National Assembly and four provincial assemblies are the Electoral College for the Senate. The members of the National Assembly from FATA elect senators from their area. Members of the National Assembly elect members on seats reserved for the federal capital. Elections to fill the seats allocated to each province are held in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote through respective provincial assemblies. According to the notifications, the ECP Training additional director general has been appointed as returning officer and the Gender Affairs additional director general, the SIMS deputy director, the Coordination deputy director, the private secretary to Training AS, staff officer to secretary and draughtsman of ECP as polling officers to conduct elections for the federal capital. The Elections additional director general will perform his duties as returning officer for FATA. The Administration additional director general, the Elections deputy director, the Training deputy director, and the Network Systems deputy director of ECP will serve as poling officers. Meanwhile, provincial Election Commissioners Sharifullah, Muhammad Yousaf Khan Khattak, Pir Maqbool Ahmed and Naeem Majeed Jafar have been appointed as returning officers for their respective provinces. A total of 22 other officials of ECP have also been appointed as polling officers to conduct Senate elections in provinces, including four polling officers for the Punjab, six polling officers each for Sindh, KPK and Baluchistan. Published in Daily Times, January 24th 2018.