KARACHI: Holding Planning and Development Minister Ahsan Iqbal responsible for census flaws in Karachi, the Jamaat-i-Islami on Sunday also blamed the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party for conniving with the federal government by “deliberately” using district administration for manipulating the population of the metropolis and kept the “honest staff” away from enumeration.

The party also announced its plan to take to the street to lodge a protest against the whole “flawed” exercise of population census.

Speaking at a press conference at the party’s Idara Noor-i-Haq headquarters on Sunday, JI leader Hafiz Naeemur Rehman asked Ahsan Iqbal to pay a visit to Karachi at the earliest and address the concerns over ongoing census.

He announced that a protest camp outside the city office of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) would be set up on Monday (today).

Hafiz Naeem announces protest outside PBS office today

He said that the census was basically a subject of the federal government, but it was executed by the provincial governments through district administrations. “This time Karachiitese have been fooled through a very delicate and technical game.”

He said that the PPP knew that Karachi’s share of seats in the Sindh Assembly would increase from 44 to at least 60 in case of a fair population count. So in order to avoid it, the PPP deputed their deputy commissioners and assistant commissioners and tasked them to manipulate the headcount, he said, adding that the government was also not releasing funds to the field staff in order to stop them from doing their jobs.

He said that the coalition partners in the federal government had made an unannounced agreement under which they would not interfere in “each other’s domain”.

“First the federal government in consultation with all provincial governments desi­gned a system and software which doesn’t work in entire Karachi,” said Hafiz Naeem. “Then they did a wrong and flawed mapping of Karachi in which many blocks of 2017 census were deleted from the current design.”

He said that the PPP government in Sindh silently watched the whole flawed exercise and did not even try to rectify the issues. “Now when it comes to field operations, the federal government has given a free hand to the PPP government to do whatever it wants to do. This nexus will not be tolerated anymore.”

He reiterated his party’s demand that each and every person living in the city should be counted as Karachiite.

The JI leader said that the party had shared its concerns over the ongoing census with documented proofs with authorities but in vain.

“Each and every citizen has the right to confirm if he or she has been counted in the enumeration or not. In this regard, people should be given access to the data which is not a rocket science in this age of technology,” he said.

He also proposed a committee comprising stakeholders of the city to oversee the census as the population of Karachi was kept undercounted under a “designed and well-deliberated conspiracy” to usurp its rights and to provide a lifeline to feudalism prevailing in the province and particularly the top brass of the PPP.

He also announced that a big rally against the flawed census exercise will be taken out on April 30 on Sharea Faisal.

Published in Dawn, April 17th, 2023