CM Shah claims federal govt undercounted Sindh’s population by 6.8 million

• Latest census has proved to be defective and unacceptable, says CM. 
• Demands recount or warns that Sindh govt would reject results.
• Says PPP to appoint Karachi mayor.

Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah claimed on Thursday that the federal government has undercounted Sindh’s population by 6.8 million people in the latest census drive, reported The News.

CM Shah, while addressing a press conference on Thursday, contended that the actual population of Sindh is 64.4 million not 57.6 million as shown by the federal government.

“This is not a small difference. The purpose of conducting a census within a period of five years was to make an accurate, foolproof and scientific enumeration of the population but this latest census has also proved to be defective and unacceptable,” he maintained.

He said a meeting on the census was recently held in Islamabad that was attended by the Sindh chief secretary. Without taking him on board, the meeting decided to close the census exercise after May 15, except in Punjab, the CM added.

Shah said that if the census count had to be based on the population growth rate, there was no need to carry out such an expensive and gruesome exercise.

“Under the law, the census is conducted after every 10 years,” he said, adding that the last census was conducted in 2017 but it was defective, due to which the federal government, on his insistence, in the Council of Common Interests decided to conduct it again in 2023.

“Now this census of 2023 is also proving to be defective and controversial, therefore the federal government must rectify its shortcomings to the extent of the satisfaction of the provincial governments,” he demanded and announced that otherwise, the Sindh government would have no option but to reject the census results.

Karachi mayor

On recently held local government elections in Karachi, the CM said the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has emerged as the largest party in the city therefore it would elect its mayor.

"There will be our [PPP] mayor in the city and people of the city knew we have served them, and they have acknowledged it through the ballot,” he said.

He added that the PPP had won the largest number of votes in the 1970 election from Karachi and after that, the people of this city who believed in the service of the PPP government in Sindh voted for its candidates in the latest local bodies’ elections.

“If I start counting the record number of development works completed in the city, the entire time of the press conference time would be consumed doing it,” he claimed.