Daily Times

KARACHI: The sixth Housing and Population Census was conducted after at least two decades on March 15th 2017 . The census was conducted in all the provinces of Pakistan ; including 16 districts of Punjab, eight districts of Sindh, 14 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 15 districts of Balochistan, five districts of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and five districts of Gilgit-Baltistan. According to the provisional summary results of the sixth population and housing census Pakistan’s total population has been recorded as 207.774 million.

The population of Lahore and Peshawar has increased by 116% and 100% respectively while Karachi’s population has increased by 60% the last 19 years, from 9.34 million to 15.91 million – surprisingly a net addition of 5.56 million people only. The results have increased uncertainty and restlessness among some political parties and a section of the people of Karachi. The leaders of political parties have termed the results of the sixth population and housing census as fictitious, skullduggery and a great conspiracy against the Sindh Province for gaining political mileage and have vowed to stage protest demonstrations.

MQM-Pakistan: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan’s leader Farooq Sattar has termed the provisional census result a planted game and alleged that the urban population of Sindh has been reduced deliberately.

He feared that the major cities of Sindh including Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur will not be given their due share. “We would not accept these initial results on any condition,”,” injustice with Karachi is doing injustice with Pakistan”.

He blamed the Census commissioner Asif Bajwa for the results saying “The actual population of Karachi is even more than 30 million – whereas according to the census it is 16 million; which is absolutely irrational. “Results have done injustice to all ethnic communities living in Karachi.

He announced to lead a protest rally against the results from Mazar-e-Quaid to Statistics Division or Supreme Court’s Karachi registry.

MQM-H: Muhajir Qaumi Movement’s Chairman, Afaq Ahmed while condemning the results has said that all this is been done to show that Muhajirs are in minority.

Hundreds of blocs remained unattended by the census team, he claimed, we had protested against that but we were told that team would also hold the second round but they never came back to that blocs again.

As Karachi is the port city, hence, there has been huge influx into it . It has more population than the announced results even the Google claims it”,” if the results are accepted, resources and shares would be reduced. Consequently, the infrastructure of the city would be ruined.

PSP: Pak Sar Zameen leader, Mustafa Kamal while rejecting the results of the census said that It was socio-economic and political murder of the people of Karachi showing less number of population than it actually is.

In Musharraf’s time, eighteen towns of Karachi had more than 20 million populations then how can it be reduced.” The current statistics show the skullduggery aiming at reducing provinces’ shares in resources”.

The statistics puts question mark on over all the process of census that was carried out with the hardly-earned money of people costing at least 30 billion. “The strategy of grabbing rights of one another must be stopped”.

PPP: The Sindh government on Monday announced that it would reject the provisional results of the sixth population census.

PPP’s leader, Nisar Khuhro has termed the results of the census as a conspiracy against the province by the federal government and said that PPP government will not let the province be treated in an unfair manner. “We will not let the federal government do injustice with the province and we will take our right by hook or by crook”.

The Sindh government alleged that population of Sindh province was shown to be less than its real number for reducing the share in the National Finance Commission (NFC) award.

The PPP-led government has also announced to call an all party conference to discuss the reservations.

Pasban leader, Altaf Shakoor has called the results a great conspiracy against Karachi. “No doubt army personal were present during the process, he said adding” but they were unaware about the streets of Karachi how can they achieve due process, they just did whatever they were asked to do”.

There is a huge influx of aliens in the country and at least there are over two million Afghanis in the country.

The establishment must rethink that whether it is pushing the country towards disintegration the same way like it did with the East Pakistan. He also demanded 40 percent of quota share for Karachiites.

Presuming threats he said, “Karachi will get less budget if the results are accepted, resultantly it would be ruined and would become Moen-jo-Daro”.

Analyst Shahnawaz Farooqui has termed that there has been a trust deficit between federation and the provincial governments therefore such reservations surface.

All the political parties have valid and genuine reservations. Karachi has been the home not only for the domestic immigrants but also for the foreign immigrants; who came here in order to search for economic opportunities.” Therefore, there is no doubt the actual population might be much more than announced in the result”.

It has not been in the interest of the government to carry out the census; hence it has been conducted after two decades. “It was also the responsibility the government to make it fool proof for taking all the stakeholders into confidence.

“The process cannot be repeated. Hence, the central government must call all the stakeholders of all the political parties to sort the solutions”, he suggested.

Published in Daily Times, August 30^th 2017.