ISLAMABAD: The government has rejected a demand by three provinces to fully finance from the federal budget more than Rs18 billion spent on the National Population Census-2017.

An informed source told Dawn that Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recently objected to at-source deduction of funds from their divisible pool shares on account of expenses incurred on the census.

“Their objections were rejected by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar at a recent meeting of the Council of Common Interests (CCI) and his stance was upheld by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi,” a senior official of the finance ministry said.

The matter was raised after the KP government moved a summary protesting over at-source deduction of its funds by the federal government on account of census expenses and called for refund. KP was supported by Sindh and Punjab.

The three provinces also questioned the minutes of the CCI meeting held on March 15, 2015. The minutes claimed that the CCI “considered the summary dated March 17, 2015 submitted by the Statistics Division and while approving the summary decided … the funds will be shared from the divisible pool by all provinces jointly”.

In a recent CCI meeting again, “the three provinces were of the view that census being a subject of Federal Legislative List, Part-II, is required to be financed by the federal government”.

Finance Minister Dar vehemently challenged this and stated that “deductions have been made strictly in accordance with the decision of the CCI in this regard. The cases already decided by the CCI may not be reopened as it will set a bad precedent”. The finance ministry has already asked the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) to surrender unutilised amount at the earliest and lay off temporary staff hired specifically for the census process. The PBS is reported to have sought a couple of weeks to collect details of expenditure from the departments involved in the exercise and its reconciliation.

It has, nevertheless, reported to the ministry that overall expenses were roughly estimated to have stayed well below approved budget of Rs18.5bn for the exercise and some savings were also expected. Mr Dar believes that in case the final results are declared in April 2018, the Election Commission of Pakistan would not be able to conduct polls in 2018 as per constitutional requirements. Therefore, a constitutional amendment to permit holding of general elections on the basis of provisional results would be required.

Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2017