QUETTA: Balochistan Chief Minister Mir Abdul Qudoos Bizenjo has said that issues of Balochistan will not be resolved with the increase of a couple of seats of the province in the National Assembly but by making the Senate more powerful.

Describing the ongoing debate on the census results of Balochistan as useless, the chief minister said that those leaders of political parties who were criticising the census results should browse through the results of the census held in 1998 and 2017 and analyse to take stock of the damage and they should hold to account the leaders who were responsible for it.

Mr Bizenjo was talking to journalists after arriving here from Islamabad after attending the Council of Common Interests meeting which approved the results of 2023 digital census.

“We have accepted the census results in which the population of Balochistan has been shown higher than other provinces,” the chief minister said.

He said it had been the position of the Balochistan government since day one that instead of population, backwardness should be made the basis for distribution of resources in the NFC awards.

He urged leaders of all political parties of Balochistan to come together and unite to take rights of the people of Balochistan from the federal government by adopting a collective plan of action in a realistic way.

“Keeping the backwardness of our districts in mind we should struggle for special grants like what happens in the developed world, otherwise just making the population as the basis for distribution of resources will not resolve the problems and Balochistan province will get nothing and will remain backward,” he said.

The chief minister said there was no denial of the fact that there may be some errors in the recent census, but we should also accept that in some districts the number of people has been exaggerated and in some flood-affected districts, people have migrated and they were not registered, but the results of the census had to be accepted in the larger interest of the province.

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2023