Will reject census results if reservations not addressed, warns Sindh govt

KARACHI (INP) – The Sindh government on Monday expressed concerns over the exclusion of certain parts of the province from the census where population growth rate is higher than a certain benchmark.

The provincial government has warned that it will reject the results if its reservations are not addressed.

Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal had directed all provincial governments to complete the field verification of the population and housing census by May 15 in areas where population growth is not in line with normal demographic trends.

However, the Sindh government has objected to this decision, calling it arbitrary.

Both a federal government ally and opposition party PTI have expressed their reservations over the census results.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has written a strongly-worded letter to Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal, stating that the government will reject the census result if its reservations are not addressed.

The CM stated that, “It is wrong to judge the population growth of all the districts/talukas against a single universal benchmark. If such a benchmark was universally applicable, [then] there would have been no need to conduct the census at all, as the population growth could have easily been calculated based on that benchmark.”

The MQM-P, an ally of the PDM government, has alleged that the population of urban Sindh has been shown less under a particular plan.

Meanwhile, PTI Senator Ejaz Chaudhry has termed the ongoing census a “fraud” and said his party had already rejected the census.