LAHORE: Baroness Saeeda Warsi has called for upholding principles in politics and other sphere of life to eliminate the current trend of hypocrisy in Muslim societies.

She was talking at the session, “The Enemy Within: A Tale of Muslim Britain,” during the Afkar-e-Taza ThinkFest here on Sunday.

Lamenting that the Muslims in Western societies were demanding rights which in their countries of origin were being denied to the minorities, she said this hypocritical attitude would not serve the purpose.

Explaining that she resigned as minister after developing differences with the then British government over Gaza policy, Ms Warsi said a politician should continue asking oneself two questions: “Am I saying what I believe in?” and “Am I doing what I’m saying?”

Stressing that the people should learn to agree to disagree, Ms Warsi, the chairperson of the Conservative Party of England, said, “my faith is about who I’m and not about who you are”.

Earlier, Dr Nizamuddin of the Higher Education Commission called for exploring the culture of dialogue and termed the festival a key to that goal.

CENSUS: Former chief census commissioner Asif Bajwa says the 2017 census will affect the forthcoming general election as new faces are likely to emerge because of demarcation of the constituencies afresh.

He was speaking at a ThinkFest session on Census and 2018 Elections.

He claimed the census was far more authentic exercise than the ones conducted by the election commission or the data available with the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) for the latter had a database of only 135m citizens.

Mr Bajwa said per head cost of census was Rs75 which, he claimed, was much lower than in the United States and other countries.

He said the final result of the latest census would be available next year and that around Rs2m people would be reduced when those somehow counted double would be deleted in the final count.

Dr Nizamuddin believed the census would entail implications other than elections.

He said the audit of the 5pc provisional census results would be a challenge for the commission formed for the purpose as the process contained many complications.

Political analyst Tahir Mehdi expected the Punjab Assembly would also witness more than half new faces notwithstanding gerrymandering in carving out of the constituencies on the basis of the latest census.

He expected changes in faces in Sindh too because of changes in electoral maps (constituencies) there.

Published in Dawn, January 15th, 2018