HYDERABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party Sindh president Nisar Ahmed Khuhro has warned that if the province’s reservations on digital census are not addressed the results of the exercise will not be accepted.

Khuhro said at a news conference at a party leader’s residence here on Sunday that Sindh government insisted that the household concerned should be given receipt after it had been counted but it was not being done. Like the result transmission system of general election 2018 the tablets being used in the census were not working properly, he said.

He called for counting residents of other provinces in Sindh if they were permanently staying here and earning their livelihood. The digital census did not clearly explain the procedure for counting immigrants and the entire Sindh was expressing reservations over it, he said.

Senator Khuhro said that Internet connectivity was also a serious issue and it had thrown into question the entire census exercise. If Sindh’s reservations were not addressed the census results would not be accepted, he warned.

He called for extending time for census to ensure every single headcount was done and data shared. If household count had been completed then its findings should be shared publicly. There was no harm in sharing the data, he said.

He said that elections would be held on the basis of old census in two provinces and new census would be used in election in the remaining two. PPP was not unmindful of its responsibilities, he said.

He said that political parties had agreed to hold 2018 polls on the basis of the old census if 5pc blocks would be randomly checked but Imran Khan did not let it happen and got its results validated through Council of Common Interests (CCI). It was Imran Khan’s government which had decided to hold digital census before time and so far many flaws had come to the fore in the census process, he said.

He said that the decision should have been taken then to hold census afresh to do away with objections over 2017 census. Correct statistics were mandatory and the census was to be held after every 10 years but Pakistan had seen census after 17 years, he said, adding that delimitations could be held during caretaker regime as well.

Khuhro said that judicial system was being insulted but courts remained silent. Case on Z.A. Bhutto’s judicial murder was pending adjudication for last 12 years in superior court.

He said earlier at a meeting of the party leaders regarding Z.A. Bhutto’s death anniversary event in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh on April 4 that the event would begin at 9pm on April 3 and continue till 2.12am on April 4 due to Ramazan.

Khuhro said that Bhutto had awakened people, rid the country of backwardness and defense of the country impregnable. He was judicially murdered as the then chief justice conceded later that the decision on his hanging was not made independently, he said.

He said that PPP had submitted a presidential reference on the decision to enable judiciary to rectify the past errors so that this stigma on the institution could be removed.

He said that while PPP was waiting for decision on this reference, others were getting relief from courts. One individual marked his attendance outside the court in an insult to judicial system while courts remained silent, he said.

Khuhro said that weapons were recovered from Imran Khan’s Lahore residence. If such recovery was made from some poor man’s house he would have landed in jail by now, he said, adding that independence of judiciary had been thrown into question.

Referring to court orders for holding provincial assembly elections in two provinces, he said the judiciary handed down judgement but it did not realise that its decisions had led to divisions in the country as half the country would go to the polls and half would not.

He asked whether 1971 dismemberment of the country was not enough and wondered whether the judiciary did not know that census was under way and new delimitations would be done after its results.

He said that judiciary should not act like Imran Khan’s pawn. PPP had raised objections on census 2017 under which Sindh had been undercounted and denied its due share in NFC Award.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2023