Chief of Army Staff Gen Qamar Bajwa approved the plan to support the sixth Population and Housing Census. ccording to the ISPR, up to 200,000 troops will be employed while continuing other security responsibilities. On Jan 3, Chief Census Commissioner Asif Bajwa had unveiled the population census plan which will be conducted in two phases.The first phase will be started from March 15, 2017 under the supervision of armed forces in selected areas. The federal government had agreed to hold population census in the country from March 15, after the Supreme Court asked it to submit a written assurance in this regard. A three-member bench of the apex court headed by Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali heard a suo motu case over delay in population census in the country. The chief justice observed that democratic system highly depended upon population census. The army’s supervision is required to conduct the exercise so that every political party and group has a complete faith in its transparency and fairness. The presence of the troops also ensures that no vested interest succeeds in manipulating the census to show an inflated population in any specific area of its influence. Previously, the federal government stated that it would need 250,000 troops for the census in one go. However, later it decided that it would hold the exercise in two phases. This apparently helped bring down the number of troops required at one time.Despite reservations aired by the National Party (NP) of Balochistan, an ally of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the federal and provincial levels, the government is going ahead with the census as per the decided timeframe. NP President and Minister for Ports & Shipping Mir Hasil Bizenjo had said that the situation can be marred if census was conducted in the presence of Afghan refugees in Balochistan. In the present mode, the census will be carried out manually by the enumerators, the low paid government servants, who are easily swayed into writing down in the specific pro-forma the details like number of people living in a certain house provided to them by the politically motivated inhabitants. The census personnel don’t bother or are not allowed by powerful elements to do physical verification of the members of the families, which resultantly inflates the number, fudging the exercise. The people of the country have unshakeable trust on the armed forces, therefore, their engagement will definitely give credence to the exercise leaving no option for anybody to point finger. The 6th census is important in the context that on the basis of its results, delimitation of constituencies will be carried out for the next general election. Therefore, an honest, clean and transparent census is a prerequisite for electoral reforms as redefining of constituencies depend on the fair headcount. Given the conspiracy theories and voices raised about the credibility of the drive by certain circles, the government has done the right thing to engage Army in the exercise. We hope that the provincial governments will also provide necessary cooperation to Pakistan Bureau of Statistics to ensure smooth conduct of census which in present times has also become more significant in order to ensure fair distribution of resources and bring the underdeveloped areas at par with the developed ones.
