To ensure transparency and reliability of the 6th population census, the Statistics Division has proposed that the National Assembly Standing Committee on the Economic Affairs Division recommend that the government freeze all quotas under 1998 census to counter provincial efforts to inflate population figures to get larger shares from federal resources allocated.
Briefing the committee, Chief Census Commissioner (CCC) said that India has frozen quotas which had helped depoliticise the census and produced a more reliable set of data. Committee Chairman Malik Azmat Khan said the committee will hold another meeting to finalise its recommendations.
The committee was informed that the house listing exercise was completed in April-May 2011 and population census was planned to be held in September-October 2011. However, it could not be executed as the Council of Common Interests (CCI) in August decided that a separate meeting between the Prime Minister and provincial Chief Ministers will be held to discuss outstanding issues. Since the meeting has not been held, the planned exercise could not be carried out even though everything was ready for implementation.
The CCC informed that the house listing survey showed a 3 to 6 percent increase in houses in Sindh but for the rest of the province they were stable. Houses in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also increased. In Pakhtun areas of Balochistan there was an increase but in Baloch areas there were difficulties in getting housing data. He said some areas were not covered in Punjab.
When asked what were the reasons for patchy work in Balochistan, he said the census teams were not provided cover by the law enforcement agencies, while in Pakhtun areas cooperation was offered for the housing census. He said the Punjab government has not supported the work of census staff that resulted in failure to finalise its housing data. However, he said that the housing census was just a management planning exercise to identify trends for population census, which will be done under GIS parameters and help from Google maps will be taken. In reply to question, CCC said that international bench mark is to complete the population census within six months of the house listing survey.
