Orakzai residents ask govt to re-hold census

HANGU: The residents on Saturday asked the government to re-hold census in Orakzai tribal district and announce two seats of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly for the district.

The residents of Orakzai staged a protest to urge the authorities to accept their demands.

Addressing the protesters, Muhammad Nawaz, Misal Khan, Malik Saeed, Abdul Baseer, Abdul Wahab and others said that the population of the then Orakzai Agency was about 225,000 as per the census held in 1998.

Quoting the 2017 census, they said that the population of Orakzai district had been shown 254,000. They maintained that the people had been displaced from the two tehsils in Orakzai when the census was held in 2017.

“Would you believe, that the population of Orakzai registered an increase of only 29,000 in the last 20 years,” Mohammad Nawaz asked.

He threatened that they would boycott the elections and stage country-wide protests if their demands were not met. “We will not rest until our district is given proper representation in the KP Assembly,” he vowed.