PESHAWAR: Qaumi Qabail Party vice-chairman Habib Noor moved the Peshawar High Court on Thursday against the 2017 population census in the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas, claiming that the figures of the population of erstwhile Fata are incorrect.

He requested the court to order the determination of the correct number of seats of those areas in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on the basis of National Database and Registration Authority’s records.

The petitioner insisted that millions of people from Fata were displaced when the population census occurred in 2017 and therefore, the statistics released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics about the population of Fata were incorrect.

Petitioner seeks PA seats for region on the basis of Nadra data

He requested the court to declare that the statistics released by PBS pertaining to population of Fata was not fair and unlawful and that it would amount to deprive the people of those areas the correct number of seats in the KP Assembly for true representation and was thus liable to be cancelled.

The petitioner prayed the court to direct the respondents, including Election Commission of Pakistan, to determine the correct number of seats for the people of Fata in the KP Assembly on the basis of the Nadra records containing permanent addresses of Pakistani citizen living in Fata and all of those names should be included in voter lists.

The respondents in the petition are the federation of Pakistan through Statistics Division secretary; chief census commissioner; provincial census commissioner, KP; Census Commissioner Fata; political agent (deputy commissioner) Orakzai tribal district; Election Commission of Pakistan and Nadra, Peshawar.

The petition filed through advocate Mohammad Muazzam Butt said the Census of 1998 showed the population of Fata as 3.2 million, whereas after 20 years in the 2017 census, the figure showed by PBS was five million.

The petitioner said Fata had formally been merged in KP, whereas the Election Commission of Pakistan was in the process of holding elections in former tribal areas for their representation in the provincial assembly of KP.

He said the elections were to be conducted on the basis of the population and housing census in Fata carried out in 2017.

The petitioner claimed that when census was conducted in Orakzai agency, more than half of the local population was homeless due to military operation.

He said ‘true’ population census could be done by collecting data from Nadra, which had issued the national identity cards to all bona fide residents of Fata, including Orakzai’s.

The petitioner said after the merger of Fata with KP, 21 seats had been allocated for tribal districts in the KP Assembly for the first time on the basis of the ‘incorrect’ population census figures.

He added that a vast majority of population of Fata had been living on a temporary basis in various parts of the country after their displacement.

The petitioner said it was the fundamental right of the people of Fata that they should be provided with representation in the assembly on the basis of correct population figures.

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2019