KARACHI: As the enumeration process ended on Monday with no announcement from the federal government about any further extension, opposition parties having electoral mandate in Karachi demanded that the national exercise be continued in the metropolis till the count of all people living here; otherwise they would not accept the results.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), which is a coalition partner of the ruling Pakistan Democratic Movement government in the Centre but its lawmakers sit on opposition benches in Sindh, said that it had already made it clear to the government that it would not accept the population figure of Karachi coming out after such a “flawed exercise”.

“We have raised this issue at all relevant forums and it was the MQM-P which pushed for multiple extensions in the deadline of the enumeration process,” said an MQM-P spokesperson.

“We want this process to continue and don’t accept the end of the exercise without the counting of each and every Karachiite,” he added.

Despite concerns and documented evidence, he said, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) had failed to count all the 38,000 high-rise buildings in the metropolis which were earlier left out.

He added that the MQM-P would keep raising the voice till the count of the last person living in Karachi.

The Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), on the other hand, demanded that the government extend the date for the census till the enumeration process is not completed.

“Each and every Karachiite is not counted yet,” JI Karachi chief Hafiz Naeemur Rehman told a press conference at Idara Noor-i-Haq.

“The census must continue until the figures come in accordance with the data of the K-Electric, other utility companies as well as the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra).”

The JI leader said that the data of all these three organisations suggested that the population of Karachi is over 30 million.

He said that the “fraud” in the name of digital census would not be accepted and all the available legal, democratic and constitutional options would be utilised against the injustice to Karachi and its people.

“Why did they remove the 2017 data from their website? Why don’t they share data on the basis of block code? Does it not sound forgery,” he questioned.

Hafiz Naeem said that his party had already made it clear in the Islamabad meeting that it didn’t want mere extension in the enumeration date but it made the basic demand to count all Karachiites.

The authorities, he claimed, had assured JI that they were extending the date for census to ensure that each and every person is counted.

Published in Dawn, May 16th, 2023