HYDERABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party’s Senator Taj Haider has said the damage wrought by so-called ‘digital census’ as is evident from population figures published in the gazette notification of Aug 7 is far bigger than was feared earlier as the notified figures have arbitrarily reduced the house and head count in Sindh by almost 10pc.

Senator Haider’s remarks came as an afterthought as then Sindh chief minister Syed Murad Ali Shah had agreed to the Aug 5 ratification of the digital census 2023 by the Council of Common Interests (CCI), which unanimously approved it. He observed in a statement issued here the other day that one failed to understand logic behind this move [undercounting of population] except ‘forced rigging’. “If somebody thinks that provinces will put up with reduced figures of population he is grossly mistaken,” he said.

He reiterated that it remained his party’s top priority to seek holding of general elections within constitutionally mandated time. Internationally recognised statistical method had to be mutually worked out to correct the fraudulent census figures which were cutting at the very roots of the federation, he said.

He said that his party’s central election cell was receiving very disturbing reports about undercounting of the population from party sources in different provinces. Sindh, which remained destination of economic migrants from all provinces as well as Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir, besides having a large number of illegal migrants, had been allotted average family size (AFS) of only 5.64 as against Punjab’s 6.43, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s 6.94 and Baluchistan’s 6.42, he said.

Senator Taj Haider claims 10pc houses, population in Sindh arbitrarily left uncounted

He said that reduction of just one person in AFS results translated into a drop of 18 to 20pc in total population of the province. There were only four areas in Sindh, two of them in Karachi, where AFS was shown above 6 while in the rest of the districts the AFS was less than 6. In sharp contrast, all districts in Punjab (except Lodhran with 5.95 AFS) had AFS well above 6, he said.

He said the lowest family size in Sindh was in Badin at 4.89 and Dadu at 5.11, both PPP strongholds. Ghotki had an average family size of 5.35 while its adjacent Rahim Yar Khan in Punjab had 6.72 AFS, he said.

He said that the party’s election cell had received alarming reports from Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that even where no enumeration was carried out in remote and sensitive areas of both the provinces the notified population figures were shown significantly lower.

In Sindh, he said, where such data was mostly available figures of houses and residents in many districts obtained in much trumpeted ‘digital census’ count had been arbitrarily reduced by almost 10pc in the notified census figures. One failed to understand logic behind this move except forced rigging, he remarked.

He said that reduction in AFS had been reinforced by drastic decrease in the number of population blocks which in Sindh were merely 43,838, while official figures of population of each block had not been made public yet.

According to law, Haider said, the number of families per block had to range between 250 to 300 while a multiple indicator cluster survey (MICS) conducted by Unicef found Sindh’s AFS standing at 6.5 and recorded hundreds of blocks where number of families per block was 800 to 1000.

He said that there were some blocks where the number of families touched 2,500. “If we just multiply reduced number of population blocks (43,838) with MICS average family size figure of 6.5 and least figure of 300 families per population block the minimum population of Sindh by the simplest calculation would come to 85,484,100,” he said.

He said the revenue allocation to Sindh of Rs1,255 billion as part of federal transfers would go up by a minimum of Rs500bn if calculated on the basis of minimum population figures.

“We need these rightful allocations for rebuilding two million homes, putting solar panels on 2.1m houses, redesigning and reconstructing devastated irrigation infrastructure and roads, providing free medical and educational services and making productive investments to create more employment opportunities,” he said.

He pointed out that federal government had formed a 13-member advisory committee in late 2021, which did not have any demographer from Sindh thought it one representative each from Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The working paper this committee prepared in January 2022 recommended de jure counting method instead of de facto method, prompting Sindh government to take up the issue with federal government in several meetings and registering protest through many letters but all the protests fell on deaf ears, remarked Senator Taj Haider.

Published in Dawn, August 23th, 2023