Opposing parties and court cases threaten the exercise

Pakistan has kicked off its first headcount and house-listing exercise in 19 years after partially recovering from a wave of terror attacks and an economic meltdown that plagued the country over the past decade. The 70-day exercise will be held in two phases.

The process is marred by court challenges over ethnicity and failure to include the transgender and disabled people in the form and details about fertility, migration, education, etc. Officials assured the Supreme Court that the anomalies will be covered in a follow-up exercise this year.

Asif Bajwa, Chief Statistician of Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, which is carrying out the census, said the forms being used were actually published in 2011. The census that is supposed to be held in every 10 years was postponed following frequent terror attacks and the economic crisis in 2008. In 2011, a separate house listing exercise failed after a three-day operation.

There are concerns about how the entire exercise will be held. Critics say some provinces fear they will be under-reported which would put their gains from a rise in population at risk. In Pakistan census is important as several key allocations, from funds to quotas and seats in the National Assembly are made based on population.

The first legal challenge to the census came from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which holds majority of seats in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city and the capital of the Sindh province. They accuse the government of pre-census rigging by overestimating the blocks of urban Sindh province, which is governed by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). The MQM represents the Urdu-speaking people who have migrated from India after partition. The apex court is hearing the case. The PPP also has reservations about the census. It believes most Sindhis in rural parts of the province may not be recorded in the census as they don’t have computerised national identity cards.

Parties call for delay

Nationalist parties in Balochistan wanted the Centre to delay the census till Afghan refugees are returned to Afghanistan. Officials admit that over a million Afghan refugees are living in the province out of which less than 30% are registered with UNHCR and the government. But their objection was overruled by the federal government.

Punjab remains the biggest province in terms of population and has greatest share in power and resources. The party that wins Punjab usually finds it easy to form the government at the Centre.

At present, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s brother Shehbaz Sharif is the Chief Minister of Punjab. Some latest trends suggest that the increase in population of Punjab was the lowest among all provinces. If that’s proved in the census, other provinces will have a better chance to stake claim for higher share of federal allocations.

The census is significant for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province as well, which is ruled by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the party of cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan.

This province has suffered the most in terms of terrorism and migration. More than five million people have migrated from KPK to Punjab and Sindh, while there was an influx of refugees from Afghanistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). This time, the Centre has decided to include seven FATA tribal agencies in KPK. The exercise would allow the authorities to take an actual count of people in a province that was hit by the war against terror and then stake a proportionate claim in power and federal resources.