PPP Sindh rejects census result, calls it ‘discriminatory’

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Sindh President Nisar Ahmed Khuhro has said that his party rejects the provisional results of the census, terming them discriminatory to the province of Sindh.

In a policy statement issued on Monday, he said that the population figures are not realistic and the population of the province has been understated. He added that the party would summon an ‘All Parties Conference’ on this issue soon and the federal government would not be allowed to meet out any excesses to the province.

The PPP also alleged that Sindh’s population was shown to be less than its actual number in order to prevent an increase in the province’s share in the National Finance Commission (NFC) award.

Opposition leader Khursheed Shah also raised reservations over the report and asked that the records of the Statistics Division and the Pakistan Army should be compared.

Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P) leader Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui said that his party is willing to attend the conference on the issue as it needs to be addressed.

He said that his party will attend any conference if it concerns Karachi and claimed that the city’s population understated. He further alleged that certain parts of the city were excluded from the census.

Yesterday, MQM-P leader Farooq Sattar had also lambasted at the census report, terming it as ‘rigged’. He claimed that the population of Karachi was well over 30 million, but the provisional report had put the population of Karachi at 14.9 million.

The federal government, on the other hand, rejected these reservations saying that the process was conducted in a transparent manner and that all the provinces had ‘monitoring committees’ which regularly briefed the provinces while the census was being conducted.

The government would further give additional time to address all reservations and complaints.

The provisional results of the 6th Population and Housing Census were presented on Friday last week which put Pakistan’s populations at 207.774 million. According to the report, Punjab’s population is the highest at 110 million while Sindh follows next with 47 million, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) with 30 million and Balochistan stands at 12 million.