The Council of Common Interests (CCI) Saturday unanimously approved the seventh census that would further delay the holding of the new general elections in the country, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.
The fifty-fifth meeting of the Council of Common Interests under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif was held Saturday in Islamabad, in which detailed consultation and decision-making on the seventh digital census was held.
Now the general elections will be held as per the delimitations to be drawn according to the new census result and consequently, the polls may be delayed by three to four months now.
The meeting was briefed in detail about the procedures and results of the seventh (digital) census by the Ministry of Planning and the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
The meeting was told that the Census Advisory Committee for Census 2022, which consists of well-known and important statisticians and the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission is the President, has established the Census Monitoring Committee and the Census Advisory Committee. Approved the recommendations.
For the first time in the country's history, the participation of all stakeholders, including provincial representatives, was ensured in the Census Monitoring Committee. The meeting was further informed that for the digital census, NADRA has provided not only software but also 126 thousand tablets, National Telecom Corporation (NTC) has provided data infrastructure, storage and computing facilities while Sparco has provided the latest digital satellite of Blocks. In addition, provincial governments provided security to 121,000 personnel, armed forces and law enforcement agencies to collect data.
It was also mentioned in the briefing that on the recommendation of the Census Advisory Committee, the Council of Common Interests involved all stakeholders in the seventh digital census process from day one. Therefore, provincial administration, civil society and educational experts were also made a part of the census to ensure transparency in the data collection process. Moreover, the Provincial Chief Secretaries and District Administrations were provided with the facility of end-to-end monitoring through dashboards for transparency in all census activities.
The briefing further informed that Digital Census 2023 continued from March 1, 2023 to May 22, 2023 while the post-data collection survey continued from July 8 to 19, 2023.
The meeting was told that in 2023, the total population of Pakistan was recorded as 241.49 million people. Similarly, the population of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was 40.85 million, the population of Punjab was 127.68 million, the population of Sindh was 55.69 million, the population of Balochistan was 14.89 million and the population of Islamabad was 2.36 million. In this sense, the current annual growth rate of Pakistan's population is 2.55 percent, while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has 2.38 percent, Punjab 2.53 percent, Sindh 2.57 percent and Balochistan 3.20 percent.
The meeting unanimously approved the results of the seventh digital census. Dr. Khalid Magsi of BAP Party, MQM and leader of Pakistan People's Party Qamar Zaman Kaira also participated in the meeting besides other members of CCI. After the consensus of all the political parties in the meeting, the census results were approved.
While thanking the participants of the meeting, the Prime Minister emphasized that the current rate of population growth is very alarming. All our national institutions and provincial governments have to take urgent measures to curb population growth. The limited resources of the country are insufficient for the growing population. If the population growth rate continues at the current rate, poverty and unemployment will increase in Pakistan despite all our efforts. So for our safe future we have to take steps to control the population growth and develop and prosper the existing population.