National Party President Mir Hasil Khan Bizenjo addressed a news conference the other day to demand that the population census scheduled to start come March 15 be delayed until all Afghan refugees have returned to their country and the Baloch who migrated to other areas due to insurgency came back to their home province. In order to avoid unrest in Balochistan, he said the issue will be taken up in the cabinet (of which he is a member as the Minister for Ports and Shipping) to have the exercise postponed. Bizenjo surely is aware that the government announced the schedule after the Council of Common Interests (CCI) gave its go-ahead. CCI decisions cannot be overturned by the federal cabinet. As for the veiled threat of unrest, the decision is not being thrust upon his province; it was approved by the Balochistan government inside the CCI.
The NP chief though seems to have been reacting to rather provocative assertions made by a Pakhtun leader from Balochistan, Mahmood Khan Achakzai, also at a recent press conference. What appears to have irked him in particular was Achakzai's demand that the Pakhtuns who have been living in Pakistan for decades should not be sent back to Afghanistan. The NP leader has genuine concern about the Baloch people becoming a minority in their own province. As he pointed out, there are around three million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, mostly living in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Hence his worry that if the census is held now, it will affect the population balance in both provinces. It makes little sense though to determine the population figures in half of the federation, making the two smaller provinces wait for Afghans to go back to their country and the Baloch to return to their homes - even as there is no certainly when that would happen. What is certain is that doing so will render the exercise meaningless since such vital matters as National Finance Commission resource distribution, representation in the assemblies, and various policy planning matters depend on population statistics.
Already census has remained in abeyance for too long under one pretext or the other. It is being held after a gap of 18 years (as per the Constitution it must be conducted every 10 years) that too under repeated Supreme Court directives. The issue of Afghan refugees is not so difficult to resolve. It may not be possible to exclude every Afghan from the exercise since many are believed to have acquired Pakistani national identity cards. These people are likely to stay back and counted as Pakistanis whenever the census is held. But bulk of them is registered with the UNHCR. With the help of the UN refugee agency they can be easily excluded from the census. It is about time Pakistan determined its exact population figures and planned accordingly.
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