KARACHI: The Sindh High Court asked the federal law officer and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)’s lawyer to forward their argument over the maintainability of a petition filed by the ruling party against ‘lack of transparency’ in the procedure of the ongoing census. A two-judge bench adjourned the hearing till April 18 when the federal law officer and the counsel for the PPP would submit their arguments with respect to the maintainability of the petition. At the outset, the federal law officer informed that the federal government had suggested forming a committee to deal with the grievance aired by the Sindh chief minister in his letter to the center. However, the provincial government had not responded yet. He contended that the petition was not maintainable. The litigants should have approached the apex court under the law to have their grievance redressed, he added. The PPP through their leaders – Farhatullah Babar and Maula Bux Chandio, had filed the petition seeking directives for the authorities concerned for carrying out census in a transparent manner. Farooq H Naik, the counsel for the petitioners, submitted that the census was being carried out in a manner which lacked transparency. “To ensure transparency and make the public aware of the data collected about them, they should have access to it so that they could re-check and verify if the relevant census enumerator had correctly mentioned the information as provided by them.” He stated that there should also be a system to resolve the grievance of the public if any information given by them was wrongly mentioned in the Form -II. Naik suggested that neutral and impartial enumerators should be employed to engage public participation in the census process. Besides, data should be collected from adult members of the family with proper receipt. He added that if any house or members of house had been left out from counting during the census process, effective mechanism be put in place to ensure timely resolution of complaints. The counsel said Article 19-A of the Constitution provided for the basic right of access to information while adding that assistant commissioners who have been notified as census district officers should maintain record of data in their respective offices and the same should be accessible to the public at large. The petitioners prayed to the court to direct authorities to conduct the census in line with international standards and norms. They pleaded that illegal immigrants and internal displace persons should be counted separately in the province and the authorities should set up emergency complaint centre accessible to the public where their grievances regarding wrong, false and fabricated enumeration may be addressed in an effective manner.