ISLAMABAD: A fresh Senate session is set to begin on Monday (today) as the standoff over the delimitation bill continues amid refusal by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) to review its stance on the issue of re-verification of the population census data.

Talking to Dawn on Sunday, PPP’s parliamentary leader in the Senate, Taj Haider, categorically stated that his party would not support the bill unless its demand on the modus operandi for a third-party audit of the five per cent census blocks was accepted. He regretted that Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi had recently called Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah and informed him that the government would not accept the PPP’s demands.

“The prime minister has rejected our demands in a hostile manner,” the PPP leader said, adding that the government was continuously ignoring these demands and had launched a campaign to defame the PPP.

On the other hand, Leader of the House in the Senate and chairman of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Raja Zafarul Haq, criticised the PPP for sticking to its demands, saying that the delay in the passage of the bill could in turn delay the general elections.

ANP threatens to part ways with combined opposition

He claimed that the government had established contacts with the PPP at various levels, but the party was not ready to show any flexibility. He said that not only the prime minister but he and the National Assembly speaker had also contacted the PPP leadership over the issue several times.

Mr Haq said they were still ready to talk to the PPP and expressed the hope that the bill would be passed in the session beginning on Monday.

Similarly, Prime Minister’s Special Assistant Barrister Zafarullah Khan, who has been given the charge of the law ministry after the resignation of Zahid Hamid, said the PPP had assisted the government in preparing a draft of the bill and even voted in the National Assembly on Nov 16. He said the PPP had also suggested an amendment to the draft that was accepted by the government and it was then incorporated into the bill.

“It seems that the PPP is now delaying the matter due to some other reasons,” he said without elaborating.

Mr Khan said the government would accept any modus operandi adopted for re-verification of the census data as per international and national laws.

In a related and significant development, the Awami National Party (ANP) on Sunday said if the PPP continued to create hurdles in the passage of the 24th Constitution Amendment Bill seeking to reallocate seats of the legislatures and delimitation of the constituencies, it would review its decision of remaining a part of the combined opposition.

In a statement, ANP spokesman and former senator Zahid Khan termed the PPP stance an “act of enmity with the nation”. He said that if the PPP did not support the bill, its claim of being a representative party of all the four provinces would lose credibility. However, he expressed the hope that the PPP would not cause a delay to show that it was not “an enemy to the Pakhtuns and the Baloch”.

Meanwhile, the 24th Constitutional Amendment Bill is not on the 28-point agenda for the session’s opening day.

Soon after the passage of the bill from the National Assembly last month, the government had convened a special session of the opposition-dominated Senate. The government could not secure the bill’s passage during the 11-day session as it lacked the required two-third members (69 senators) in the 104-member house, mainly because of the PPP’s strategy to keep its members away from the proceedings.

Interestingly, not only the PPP, but a majority of lawmakers belonging to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf also stayed away from the proceedings.

The PPP has 25 senators, excluding Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani, in the house. The composition of the house shows that the bill could be passed from the Senate even without the PPP’s support if all other parties support the bill and ensure the presence of their members in the house.

The 24th Constitution Amendment Bill, which paves the way for allocation of seats in the National Assembly and delimitation on the basis of provisional census results, has already been passed by the National Assembly last month.

Article 51(5) of the Constitution provides that seats in the National Assembly shall be allocated to each province, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the federal capital on the basis of population in accordance with the last preceding census officially published.

There is a consensus among political parties that for purposes of the next general elections and by-polls, the allocation of National Assembly seats should be made on the basis of provisional results of the census without changing the existing total number of general seats (272) and women’s seats (60) and retaining the share of Fata (12).

According to the proposed reallocation, the seats will increase for Balochistan (2 general seats + l woman seat), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (4+l) and federal capital (l+0), while seats for Punjab will decrease (-7 and -2). The seats for Sindh will remain the same.

The Council of Common Interests (CCI) had at a meeting on Nov 13 approved publication of provisional results of the census for purposes of Article 5l(5) as provided in the bill. The CCI had also decided that a third-party validation would be carried out in 1pc census blocks. The proportion of census blocks where the re-verification exercise is to be carried out was changed to 5pc on the MQM’s demand when the bill was passed by the National Assembly.

The PPP says that if the faulty methodology used in the census is repeated in the post enumeration survey (PES) of the selected blocks by the same organisation that had carried out the census, the results will once again become controversial.

According to Taj Haider, the internationally accepted de facto method, which records residents at their present place of residence, is the only method to record population correctly and this method should be used during the re-verification process.

He also called for the use of internationally recognised templates for enumeration that record the data and transmit it online to controlling offices. Besides this, the PPP leader has suggested formation of a mutually agreed ‘census commission’ comprising recognised demographers to supervise and undertake the PES.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2017