PPP rejects cabinet decision to approve Census 2017

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Peoples Party on Tuesday rejected the cabinet decision to approve the Census 2017, saying that it is unbelievable that the Council of Common Interests could validate a massive fraud in the shape of the Census 2017 against the right of people of Sindh to be counted correctly. “All parties of the Senate had signed an agreement for a recount in 5% population blocks and the correction of the census figures and this agreement bears the signatures of Senator Azam Swati who at that time was parliamentary leader of the PTI,” said Senator Taj Haider, member, PPP Core Committee, in a statement on the validation of the provisional figures of census by the CCI. He said the agreement of all leaders of parliamentary parties in the Senate to correct census figures concluded with the then prime minister Shahid Khakan Abbasi in the chair was a trick played against Sindh by the PML-N government to get the 24th Amendment passed.

He said the present government instead of implementing that agreement is promising fresh census in 2023 which is yet another deception. No one can trust this government, he said. Sindh is not prepared to be deceived twice on the same issue. “This government has come into power through an electoral fraud and its record shows that it wants to perpetuate every fraud against the people of Pakistan,” he said, adding that in spite of the chief minister Sindh reminding the other CCI members again and again that migrants from other provinces into Sindh had been counted in the fraudulent census in their original provinces and not in Sindh.

He said the real population of Sindh counted in different surveys by internationally accepted de facto method is around 62 million and not 47 million as counted by the anti-Sindh de jure method. He said the loss of representation and divisible resources due to this fraud can never be ignored by the people of Sindh. “Even livestock animals are counted correctly, why not Sindhis,” he questioned.