ISLAMABAD, MAR 03 (DNA) – With 131 candidates in the race for 52 Senate seats from all the four provinces, the federal capital and Federally Administered Tribal Area (Fata), the election for the upper house of the Pakistan’s parliament will be held today.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has finalized all arrangements to conduct the polls in a smooth and transparent manner.

The polling will start from 9:00am and will continue till 4:00pm without any break.

Polling stations have been set up in the Parliament House Islamabad and all the four provincial assemblies.

Special security arrangements have been made outside all the polling stations to avoid any untoward incident.

There are 20 candidates in the run for Punjab’s 12 seats, 33 candidates are contesting for 12 seats from Sindh, 26 candidates are in the race for 11 seats of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 23 for 11 seats of Baluchistan, 24 for Fata’s four seats and five candidates are in the field for Islamabad’s two seats.

The Election Commission of Pakistan, in a review meeting, has taken several decisions to ensure vote privacy during the elections.

The Commission decided that returning officers will ensure that no voter exposes his vote’s privacy and neither be allowed to take issued ballot paper outside the polling station and in case of non-compliance the returning officer will cancel the ballot paper of such persons.

It was also decided that all returning officers will have powers of full magistrate and they can suspend the electoral process by bringing such elements to ECP’s notice in case of irregularity.

The 52 Senators are retiring on March 11.

Prominent among those who are retiring include Senate Chairman Mian Raza Rabbani, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Leader of the Opposition Aitzaz Ahsan, Mushahid Hussain Sayed, Farhatullah Babar, Azam Swati, Kamran Michael, Shahi Syed, Kamil Ali Agha, Talha Mehmood, Tahir Hussain Mash­hadi, Nasreen Jalil and Ilyas Bilour.

Eighteen of the 52 retiring senators belong to the Pakistan People Party Parliamentarians (PPP-P), nine to Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), five are from the Awami National Party (ANP), four each belong to Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), three to Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), two to Balochistan National Party-A (BNP-A), and one each to Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F). Five independents are also set to complete their tenure, according to the Senate website.

The PML-Q will have no representation in the house after this month as all its four senators will retire.

The senators from Punjab who are retiring are: M. Hamza (PML-N), Kamil Ali Agha (PML-Q), Muhammad Mohsin Khan Leghari (independent), Muhammad Zafar­ullah Khan Dhandla (PML-N), Saud Majeed (PML-N) in place of Malik Rafique Rajwana, Sardar Zulfikar Khosa (PML-N), Asif Saeed Kirmani (PML-N) in place of Dr Babar Awan, Aitzaz Ahsan (PPP-P), Moham­mad Ishaq Dar (PML-N), Khalida Parveen (PPP-P), Nuzhat Sadiq (PML-N) and Kamran Micheal (PML-N).