CCI’s Approval of Population Census2023: Some intriguing questions

The Council of Common Interest (CCI) has approved the findings of the 6th Population Census (Census2023) on Aug 5, 2023 and after the Census is, borrowing the phrase from Article 51(5) of the Constitution, ‘officially published’ in the next day or two, it will become obligatory for the ECP to undertake fresh de-limitation of the National and Provincial Assemblies’ constituencies. Usually, ECP requires a minimum of 4 months to complete the Delimitation exercise. ECP may cut down the 90-days election period to 60 and, if PM dissolves the NA on August 9 as announced, one may expect the next General Election to be held somewhere in February 2024! 

The first intriguing question is whether the Govt has made CCI to approve the new Census at this time to gain more time for the General Election or it was simply discharging its constitutional obligation of formalising findings of the census whose work had been completed?

Isn’t it too much of a coincidence that the provincial share of population and National Assembly seats has not changed one bit after undertaking the new census? This comfortable coincidence has spared the government the obligation to amend the constitution Article 51(3) which would have become necessary if the provincial share of population had varied in the new census? The Govt would not have been able to get the Constitution amended because the NA doesn’t have the required number of MNAs to pass the amendment. 

The limited census data that was released by PBS while seeking CCI approval indicates that Balochistan has experienced the highest percentage of population growth (20.66%) between 2017 and 2023, followed by Islamabad at 17.41% and Sindh at 16.38%. The slowest growth was witnessed in the case of KP where the percentage growth was 15.07%. Punjab province grew at 16.09% between 2017 and 2023. 

Pakistan, as a whole, grew at the high rate of 2.55% annually. Some experts seriously question the accuracy of this figure as Pakistan grew at 2.40% as per 2017 Census, which was also considered quite high at that time.

Among its provinces and ICT, Balochistan grew at 3.2% followed by ICT at 2.81%, Sindh at 2.57%, Punjab at 2.53% and KP at 2.38%.

How plausible is the decrease in KP Urban population in KP and ICT while all obvious trends indicate urbanization trend?

Looking forward to the release of complete census data so that one can make better sense of the figures already released.