Islamabad, August 29 (TNS): Chief Census Commissioner Asif Bajwa has rejected opposition’s reservations regarding over recent census results, state-run radio reported.
Briefing the Senate Committee on Privatization and Statistics in Islamabad on Tuesday, he said verification of “every individual” was ensured during the census process.
Asif Bajwa said that Pakistan Bureau of Statistics had verified the national identity cards of the population through National Database and Registration Authority.
He said Pakistan Army had assisted the Bureau of Statistics in carrying out the census by providing security.
Bajwa said the government had declared the entire Lahore district as urban, while two districts in Karachi are still classified as rural.
The chief census commissioner also dismissed the objections over the transgender community’s census, saying that only those who had declared themselves as transgender were included in the category. “No one was counted as transgender based on their appearance,” he told the committee.
Bajwa informed the committee that overseas Pakistanis had not been included in the census.
He said that final census report will be prepared by April 2018. The cost of the census amounted to Rs17billion.
PPP Senator Aijaz Dhamra had rejected the census results, pointing out that the populations of Karachi and Lahore had not shown major differences, which was not possible.
The committee has demanded a post-census survey in 1 per cent out of the 168,943 blocks. The blocks to be surveyed will be determined by provincial governments, it said.
Opposition parties, notably the PPP and MQM, had voiced serious concerns over the preliminary results of the national census, questioning the authenticity of the figures released by the statistics division.
