Poll schedule after assemblies' dissolution: Election Commission

The schedule for general elections will be announced soon after dissolution of the assemblies, said Kanwar Dilshad, the Secretary of the Election Commission (EC).
The Election Commission met here on Wednesday to discuss the draft code of conduct for political parties with Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Qazi Muhammad Farooq in the chair, which decided to invite political parties on November 19 for discussing implementation of the code of conduct.
About the schedule for the polls, Dilshad said that notification regarding schedule for General Election 2007-08 will be issued soon after dissolution of the National Assembly and Provincial Assemblies. Dilsahd said the EC has gone through the comments/suggestion received from the political parties on draft Code of Conduct and now invited them to finalise it.
The meeting also decided that appointment of returning officers across the country would be done after concurrence of chief justices of all the high courts, but the meeting approved the appointments of returning officers for the reserved seats for women and non-Muslims in the national and provincial assemblies.
President General Pervez Musharraf had announced on Sunday that the general elections would be held by January 9 next year, but did not give any timeframe to lift emergency, which the opposition parties as well as world community want him to remove ahead of general elections.
Political parties, particularly the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) has alleged that there are discrepancies even in the revised voters' lists, he added. Earlier, the Supreme Court of Pakistan had given 30 days time to include 30 million persons in revised electoral rolls after receiving complaints that they have been left out.
The Commission was granted time on Benazir Bhutto's petition that 20 million voters whose names were in the 2002 voter lists were missing from the new list, and an additional 10 million people who have attained the voting age, 18 years, are also missing from the list.
It claimed to have included over 26 million left out voters in the revised list, but the list was neither provided to political parties nor put on website which the PPP says created doubts about the revised rolls. Opposition political parties and civil society groups have, however, called reconstitution of the EC to ensure free and fair elections.
Sources said the constitution of the EC was not completed as it had only three members each from Balochistan and Punjab along with the CEC, but two members each from Sindh and Balochistan are yet to be appointed to make it complete before the issuance of election schedule.