CCI to convene tomorrow for 'approving' 2023 census

• PM Shehbaz has greenlit planning ministry's proposal.
• Census approval could delay polls by 3 to 4 months.
• Premier says polls to be held on latest census.

ISLAMABAD: The Council of Common Interest (CCI) will hold a meeting on August 5 to approve the 2023 digital census held earlier this year, sources told The News.

According to the sources, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has greenlit the Ministry of Planning and Development's proposal to convene the CCI meeting to approve the first-ever digital Population and Housing Census conducted in 2023.

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has successfully conducted the latest Population Census and compiled the results, which are now being submitted to the CCI for constitutional approval.

If the census 2023 is approved, it will lead to a delay of at least three to four months in the upcoming elections.

Earlier, it was under discussion to hold the CCI meeting on August 2, but it could not be done. Prime Minister Shehbaz, a few days back, had said that the next elections will be held on the basis of a fresh population census.

According to The News report, authored by Mehtab Haider and published on Thursday, there might be three possibilities for the CCI. Either it will scrap the results in the wake of serious flaws likely to be identified by all the stakeholders during the meeting or approve the census results.

In the latter case, there will be consequences of delaying the next elections in the wake of the delimitation exercise to be carried out by the Election Commission of Pakistan. The third possibility will be the formation of a committee to resolve lingering disputes and find out an amicable solution acceptable to all the stakeholders.

The question also arises of how the government will get approval for constitutional amendments which require a two-thirds majority, the report said, adding that If any plan exists for delaying the general elections at any level then the digital census results may be approved. In that case, the ECP requires at least four to six months for undertaking the delimitation exercise.

The latest census results show that the country’s population hovers around less than 250 million but it has crossed 240 million population. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has accomplished the task of conducting post enumeration survey for verifying the first-ever results of the digital population census in selected blocks of 48 districts.

The PBS selected 2,500 blocks in the selected districts of the country to recheck the counting population to lend credibility to this exercise.

Some results of the conducted latest population census, according to the report, were quite unique and interesting but hard to digest even for demographers, especially in Balochistan which has a high density of Baloch nationals.

There are complaints of overcounting in rural parts of Sindh while in urban parts of the province especially in Karachi there were rampant complaints over less counting. “The dates of a stipulated timeframe of the census were extended and finally, the post-enumeration survey was also conducted but its results could not yet be ascertained so the chances of triggering controversy still persisted, said the report.