KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah, who is also the Sindh president of the Pakistan Peoples Party, has constituted an organising committee in order to make suitable arrangements for the proposed multi-party conference on census under the auspices of the PPP and to send out invitations to political and religious leaders of the province.

The committee, to be headed by Sindh PPP general secretary Senator Taj Haider, comprises Maula Bux Chandio, Dr Sikandar Mandhro, Syed Nasir Hussain Shah, Syed Waqar Mehdi, Najme Alam, Lal Bux Bhutto, Rashid Rabbani and Nadeem Bhutto.

The issue of the upcoming census also came up in the current session of the Sindh Assembly and a joint resolution, which was adopted unanimously, asked the Sindh government to approach the federal government over their reservations on holding a house count in just three days. “The census authority shall have representation of all provinces … modalities to conduct census shall be evolved with the consent of all representatives of provinces,” states the resolution.

During the meeting it was also decided that housing and population censuses shall also be held at the same time and the cost of census shall be shared by all provinces through the divisible pool.

It may be recalled here that on March 18, 2015 a meeting of the Council of Common Interests chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif decided to carry out the country’s sixth population census in March 2016 with the support of armed forces.

The last census was carried out in 1998.

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2016