THIS refers to the news story ‘Number of Balochi-speaking people in Balochistan falls’ (Sept 11). The headline of the story implies that population of Balochi-speaking people in Balochistan has decreased. This is incorrect.

In fact, the census data based on language spoken by people has not been released so far. One can calculate the population of Baloch majority districts which has not fallen but increased. Apart from this, the story makes two inaccurate claims that the number of Balochi-speaking population has shrunk marginally and that there has been no increase in the population of Pakhtun districts.

In reality, the populations of both Baloch and Pakhtun districts have increased and this can be confirmed by studying the census data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.

Furthermore, this story uses incorrect figures owing to a simple arithmetic mistake. While calculating the share of Baloch and Pakhtun majority districts in the total population of Balochistan, they have used population of 30 (21+9) districts in numerator and 32 districts (including Quetta and Sibi) in denominator.

This basic arithmetic mistake has led the story to arrive at the incorrect shares of Baloch and Pakhtun-majority district populations in census 2017 at 55pc and 25pc, respectively.

Adnan Aamir

Quetta

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2017