PPP rejects ‘so-called results’ of digital census

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has raised its voice against the notified census results. In a statement on Tuesday, Senator Taj Haider, in-charge of the central election cell of PPP, said computations revealed damage done to the Sindh province as a result of “so-called digital census” is far bigger than what was initially feared.

He said Sindh, which remains destination of economic migrants from other provinces, besides a large number of illegal migrants, has been allotted an average family size (AFS) of 5.64, while Punjab has 6.43, Khyber Pukhtunkhwa 6.94 and Balochistan 6.42.

He said reduction of just one person in average family size results in a reduction of 18 to 20pc in the total population of Sindh. “There are only four districts in Sindh, two of them urban in Karachi, where the average family size is above 6, while the rest of the districts situated in rural Sindh have average family size of less than 6,” he said. All districts in Punjab (except Lodhran AFS 5.95) have an average family size well above 6, he added.

He said the lowest family size in Sindh is in Badin 4.89 and 5.11 in Dadu, both PPP strongholds. Ghotki has an average family size of 5.35, while adjacent Rahimyar Khan District in Punjab has average family size of 6.72.

Senator Taj Haider said the PPP central election cell was receiving alarming reports from the provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. “Even when no enumeration had been carried out in remote and sensitive areas of both the provinces, the notified population figures of various districts were significantly less than the ones that had been readily available in the digital census”, he said.

In Sindh, he said, where such data was mostly available, the figures of houses and residents in many districts count had been arbitrarily reduced by almost 10 percent in the notified census figures. “One fails to understand the logic behind this move except forced rigging,” he noted.

Taj Haider said reduction in average family size has also been reinforced by drastic reduction in the number of population blocks, which in Sindh are only 43,838. Official figures of population of each block have not been made public, he said. According to the law, he said, the number of families per block has to range between 250 and 300.

The PPP election cell in-charge said if we just multiply the reduced number of population blocks (43,838) with the MICS average family size figure of 6.5 and the least figure of 300 families per population block, the minimum population of Sindh works out to be 85,484,100.

He said the revenue assignment to Sindh of Rs1,255 billion as part of federal transfers would go up by a minimum of Rs500 billion if it was calculated on these minimum population figures of Sindh. “We need these rightful allocations for rebuilding two million homes, putting solar panels on 2.1 million houses, redesigning and reconstructing devastated irrigation infrastructure and roads, providing free medical and educational services and making productive investments in order to create more employment opportunities,” he said.

The PPP senator pointed out in late 2021, a department of federal government had constituted a 13-member advisory committee, which did not have any demographer from Sindh and had only one representative each from Balochistan and Pakhtunkhawa.

He said in the working paper this committee prepared in January 2022 de jure method of count instead of de facto method was recommended.

The Sindh government continued to hold meetings with the federal government and got registered their protest through many letters, he said. “But the protests fell on deaf ears,” he observed.

“Holding of general elections within the constitutionally mandated time remains our top priority at present.

But, if somebody thinks the provinces will put up with the reduced figures of population, he is grossly mistaken.”

Taj Haider said internationally-recognised statistical method has to be worked out to correct the fraudulent census figures, which are cutting at the very roots of our federation.