KARACHI, April 19: Sindh General Secretary of the Pakistan People's Party Taj Haider, who is heading the party's provincial monitoring body on census, has proposed that electronic database being compiled by the National Database Registration Authority should be made the basis of national census as large-scale manipulations, especially in Karachi, have made the census exercise extremely controversial.

He said they had received complaints that instead of using official forms for entering particulars of family heads, unauthorised persons were noting down such particulars on plain papers with pencils.

Mr Haider regretted that while the census authorities had agreed to the proposals that he suggested in his letter to the chief secretary on April 15 and had also issued instructions accordingly, the situation on ground remained unchanged and law violations continued unabated.

The electronic data prepared by Nadra had covered nearly the entire population, he said.

During the flood relief operation, computerised national identity cards were issued after verification to several flood survivors who had no identity cards. Still wrong entries in Nadra data could be checked and corrected. The missing data of a very small percentage of population could be quickly entered and updated, he added.

Since the residential address of every cardholder was printed on their CNIC, there should not be any problem in the first phase of an accurate house count, he said.

In the second phase of population census, all other relevant information could be easily collected on the designated forms and added to the electronic database.