After having delayed the matter for eight years, the government has announced to conduct the sixth national census in March. The decision was taken in a meeting of the Council of Common Interests chaired by the prime minister himself and attended by the chief ministers of the four provinces in March 2015.

Census is normally considered a decennial activity that has been frequently postponed under one or other pretext. After the 1981 census, the subsequent census was conducted in 1998 i.e. delayed by seven years. Similarly, the census scheduled in March is already overdue by eight years. Thus Pakistan became a unique country which has conducted only one census during the past 35 years i.e. from 1982 to 2016.

According to reports, the government has estimated an expenditure of Rs14.5 billion to hold the census. The Pakistan Army will receive more than half of the requested amount (7.4 billion rupees) to provide security for the census. During the meeting it was also decided that housing and population censuses would be held in tandem and the cost of census will be shared by the provinces through the divisible pool.

After almost one year, the governing council of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics headed by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar approved the timeline for the census. It was decided that the preliminary results will be completed by June this year, while the district-wise data reports will be completed by December 2017. It was also decided that the population census will be conducted in one go.

Census provides basis for determining the contours of national and provincial planning in various spheres of the state affairs. The important aspects among these include distribution of resources, political representation, development planning, share in jobs and economic opportunities etc. Additionally, census data provides vital information on demographic pattern, trends of human development in various parts of the country and across various segments of society. This data can also set the direction of public policy and public sector development planning.

Another major outcome of the census would be to determine the number of seats in the national and provincial assemblies. Clause 5 of Article 51 that says seats in the National Assembly shall be allocated to each province, the federally administered tribal areas (FATA) and the federal capital on the basis of population in accordance with the last preceding census officially published.

Share of the provinces in the National Finance Commission Award is largely dependent on the population. As against the norm, population has remained the sole criterion for the finance award for the provinces. Although the 7^th National Finance Award also incorporated other indicators, population carries 82.5 per cent weightage in determining the size of pie for the provinces. Any radical shift to reduce the weightage of population is not expected in the next finance award.

Similarly, the share allocated in the federal government jobs is also linked to the population of the provinces. Although the job quota stipulated in the constitution is not commensurate with the current share in the national population, any future legislation can address this lacuna. At one stage, the Bureau of Statistics contemplated the option of delinking the next census from the financial award, job quota and seats in the assemblies. India, for example, through a constitutional amendment has frozen the share of federating units based on the census data of 1971.

Considering the prevalent socio-economic and political polarisation in the country, census has remained a thorny matter. The demographic data entails political implications, particularly in Sindh and Balochistan provinces where embittered native populations remain under a looming apprehension of being converted into a numerical minority. People living in remote areas in these provinces are often ignored by enumerators. Similarly, the areas plagued by chronic law and order situation are also ignored during census due to security concerns. This is inimical to native population in these provinces leaving them underestimated.

These provinces have endured a massive influx of legal and illegal immigration over the past decades -- which is now approaching a tipping point. A slight flip can perilously turn the fulcrum of delicate demographic balance against the native population in the two provinces. Both provinces have been remonstrating for expulsion of millions of illegal immigrants and a separate category to register the immigrants who were able to evade government systems to acquire citizenship documents.

The government has so far not evolved a mechanism to attenuate these concerns.

A recently held meeting of the Senate’s Standing Committee on Finance conceded that there was no defined mechanism to exclude foreigners living in Pakistan, including Afghan nationals, in the upcoming national housing census. The committee plans to convene a special meeting to discuss ways to prevent the counting of foreigners in the census. Saleem Mandviwala, the committee’s chairman, decided to seek input of the Ministry of Interior, Election Commission of Pakistan, the National Database and Registration Authority and the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions on the issue to ensure the census is credible.

Native population in Sindh and Balochistan consider illegal immigrants as a major threat to their numerical majority as well as a considerable burden on their meagre resources. In both provinces, millions of illegal immigrants have managed to get legal documents. Certain political parties, having appetite for their ethnic supremacy, have been courting these illegal immigrants to get themselves registered as a particular linguistic group. The Sindh government has officially approached the federal government for expulsion of 2.5 million illegal immigrants from the province.

Against this backdrop, transparency of the exercise is pivotal for its credibility and acceptance by all stakeholders.

Legality of the institutional arrangement has also raised questions over the whole process of census. Under the constitution, census falls in the domain of the Council of Common Interests. The CCI under Article 154 has been mandated to exercise supervision and control over related institutions enumerated in the Federal Legislative List-2 that includes census. Article 154 unambiguously remits this authority to the CCI by saying "The Council shall formulate and regulate policies in relation to matters in part-II of the Federal Legislative List and shall exercise supervision and control over related institutions." The decision to conduct census was taken by the CCI but since then CCI has not been involved in the oversight and supervision of the whole process. This is a brazen violation of constitution and provinces will have every right to question the legality and credibility of the whole process.

Certain quarters also frown upon the composition of the governing council of the Bureau of Statistics and its body of members where Balochistan, KP and rural Sindh have no representation in negation of the spirit of a federation. Since the very function falls under the remit of CCI, its composition should reflect the spirit of federation as observed in NEPRA and IRSA.

A major stumbling block would be the deployment of personnel from the army or paramilitary forces to ensure security of enumerators and a genuine enumeration. According to some newspapers, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics officials told reporters after the meeting that security arrangements had not yet been finalised for the census scheduled to begin on March 28. The officials said that if the security apparatus was not finalised, the census might be delayed. This makes the forthcoming census a politically sensitive exercise and any deliberate manipulation or faulty data collection will have politically explosive consequences.

Household count in 2011 provides a useful learning for the census managers. In 2011, the government had initiated the census exercise. However, results of the household counting revealed a handiwork of data manipulation as an intended over enumeration was witnessed in parts of Karachi and Hyderabad where population increase compared to the 1998 census was disproportionally high and in a complete defiance to logical trends of population. Districts of Karachi East, Karachi Central and Hyderabad registered 158 per cent, 93 per cent and 96 per cent growth. Overall population growth in Karachi division remained 89 per cent.

A bid to depict artificial majority by a particular ethnic party led to an over-bloated and untenable counting that culminated in abortion of the census process. It was a deja vu of the 1991 census when a similar trend of over-enumeration was witnessed. Ultimately assistance of the armed forces was sought in 1998 to conduct the census.

This time, again, the census is being planned with the support of army to ensure genuine counting of houses and heads. However, the military and paramilitary forces are already entangled in military operations in FATA, Balochistan and Karachi, therefore sparing a sizeable number of troops would be a challenge.

The federal government has to ensure holding of a long overdue census under the supervision of CCI. The government is also obligated to do it in a constitutionally correct and a transparent manner. Considering the past experiences of data tampering and massive over-counting in the urban areas of Sindh, assistance of armed forces becomes inevitable for an immaculate counting to avoid incendiary political consequences.