ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has rejected the government’s plan to hold fresh census in the country, saying it would be another fraud.

“No one in his right mind can trust this government. Sindh is not prepared to be deceived twice on the same issue,” PPP Senator Taj Haider said in a statement on Monday.

He said the present government had come to power through an electoral fraud and its record showed that it wanted to perpetuate every fraud against the people of Pakistan.

About the decision of the Council of Common Interests that could validate the 2017 census results, he said it was unbelievable that the CCI could validate a fraud against the right of the people of Sindh that they should be counted correctly.

Senator Haider reminded that all parties in the Senate had signed an agreement for a recount in five per cent population blocks and correction of the census figures. The agreement also bears the signatures of Senator Azam Swati who at that time was parliamentary leader of the PTI.

The agreement of all leaders of parliamentary parties in the Senate to correct the census figures concluded with then Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi in chair was a trick played against Sindh by the then Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government in order to get the 24th Amendment passed.

Senator Haider regretted that the present government instead of implementing that agreement was promising the fresh census which was yet another deception.

He said that although the Sindh chief minister had reminded the other CCI members again and again that the migrants from other provinces had been counted in the fraudulent census in their original provinces and not in Sindh, the CCI had opted for the first time in the country’s history to take decisions with majority vote, and not by consensus.

The PPP senator said the real population of Sindh counted in different surveys by internationally accepted de facto method was around 62 million and not 47 million as counted by the anti-Sindh de jure method. “The loss of representation and divisible resources due to this fraud can never be ignored or forgotten by the people of Sindh. Even livestock animals are counted correctly, why not us Sindhis?” he asked.

Published in Dawn, April 14th, 2021