KARACHI: Keeping up with the 2017 figures, Central district has so far again emerged as the most populated district of Karachi as the city population has crossed 18 million during the ongoing census, official sources said on Wednesday.

Karachi division is administratively divided into seven districts — East, West, South, Central, Malir, Korangi and Keamari.

Six years ago, the population of district Central in the 2017 census was recorded at 2.97m — highest in all other districts of the metropolis.

They added that it was the first time during the ongoing ‘combing operation’ of the census that the number of people counted in a single day had crossed 100,000 figure.

South is least populated among seven districts of metropolis

“The number of Karachi population has crossed 18 million figure,” said an official citing the latest data compiled by Tuesday evening. “It was quite significant that the number of population counted in single day crossed 100,000 on Tuesday. In early days of the enumeration, it was quite common, but it was not seen for past many weeks.”

He said that it was probably for the first time since the federal government intervened and deputed teams of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) to assist and lead the enumeration process being conducted by provincial administrations.

“To address the complaints of the political parties, these teams are conducting visits in high-rise buildings which were left uncounted or not counted at all,” he said.

He referred to the district-wise details of population so far counted in Karachi which showed Central district with total 3.42 million people followed by East district with 3.17m people enumerated so far.

The Korangi district with 2.92m people ranked third so far followed by West with 2.27m, Malir 2.21m, Keamari 2.18m and South becomes the smaller district in terms of population with 1.81m people.

The officials were not sure about a further extension in the May 15 deadline of the enumeration process, but they were confident that with the passage of time, the number of population counted daily would fall gradually as the teams had “almost completed the job”.

Only last week PBS authorities after a detailed briefing to ministers, lawmakers and leaders of political parties in Islamabad decided in principle to extend digital census till May 15.

The census exercise was launched on March 1 and was supposed to be completed in a month, but the deadline was extended several times.

“In Karachi, the teams comprising PBS officials from Karachi and Islamabad were deputed in the last week of Ramazan,” said another official. “There were reports people living in several high-rise buildings which housed hundreds of thousands of individuals were not counted. The same complaints were made by different political parties. So it was decided to constitute PBS teams and attach them with the field enumerators. The PBS teams are actually focusing those high-rises and they have almost completed their job.”

The political parties mainly Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan, Jamaat-i-Islami and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf have already warned that they will not accept the “flawed” census if any attempt was made to manipulate the number of Karachi population.

The nationalist parties as well as Sindhi intellectuals have already demanded that the process of census be stopped forthwith as they believed the deadline only in urban areas has been extended to rig the results.

Published in Dawn, May 4th, 2023