DefinePK

Abstract

The fifth decennial population Census was held after 17 years and its data is now being processed. Originally the Census was scheduled to be held in March 1991. The exercise had been actually initiated that year from Sindh but was soon abandoned when two major ethnic groups in the province started accusing each other of resorting to false enumeration in order to achieve a fake majority in the province. Some of the prominent Punjabi politicians also objected that the head count figures in Sindh were being engineered in order to stake claims to more resources for the province at the expense of other federal units. The Census was postponed in view of the objections and it was announced that the exercise would be undertaken in October the same year. This time the Balochistan government announced that it would reject the Census results if thousands of Afghan refugees living in the province, many among whom had acquired fake Pakistani identity cards, were not first repatriated to their own country. As the federal government failed to do this, the Census had to be postponed