PESHAWAR: Pakistan People’s Party provincial president Humayun Khan has urged the federal government to ensure accuracy and impartiality in holding the upcoming population census and warned that in case of any injustice, the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will come onto the roads.

The PPP leader, while speaking at a workers’ meeting at the residence of Khan Bahadur here on Tuesday, said the national census had long been overdue. He said the provinces had attached expectations to get due share in the national resources provided the coming census was conducted in a transparent manner.

The census would help get correct demographic indicators for national development and true representation of the provinces in the national mainstream, he said, and added that fulfillment of the job in a just way was a great challenge for the federal government.

Mr Khan warned that in case the government adopted a dubious mechanism for conducting the census it would cause apprehensions among the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and entire responsibility would rest with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

The PPP leader said the KP province had heavily suffered due to prolonged militancy and the people would not tolerate any kind of injustice in the census process.

He claimed that when in the government, the PPP always distributed resources among the provinces in consultation with the stakeholders.

Criticising PTI and PML-N, Humayun Khan said the ruling parties were not sincere to bring any real change to the lives of the people, and were ‘playing’ with their emotions by raising hollow slogans.

He claimed that PPP was regaining popularity in KP and would win maximum number of the provincial assembly seats to form the government. He urged party leaders to focus on reactivating the disgruntled workers.

Other PPP leaders, including Syed Ayub Shah, Azam Afridi and Zulfiqar Afghani also spoke on the occasion.

Published in Dawn, February 22nd, 2017