By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s population has increased by 24 percent to 249.6 million people, according to the preliminary results of the first-ever digital census conducted in the country, the chief statistician said on Monday.
Naeem-uz-Zafar, the chief census commissioner of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), told a news conference that the census was completed in less than three months and covered all areas of Pakistan except some snow-bound and law and order-affected regions, where the field operation would be conducted later.
According to the provisional data, Punjab remained the most populous province with 127.5 million people, followed by Sindh with 57.9 million, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa with 39.8 million, and Balochistan with 22 million. The federal capital Islamabad had a population of 2.4 million.
The commissioner said the country’s population had increased by 49 million since the last census while 10.7 million more people were counted additional by expanding the census timeline.
Results would be released in June after verification and analysis by a committee of demographers.
The census chief said the country would resume its population count in areas affected by snowfall and security concerns after getting approval from the provincial governments.
Zafar asked the authorities to suggest a suitable time for conducting the census in 129 blocks of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, 80 blocks of Gilgit-Baltistan, and 16 blocks of Mansehra in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The census would also cover 57 blocks of Rojhan in Punjab and 11 blocks of Ghotki in Sindh, where law and order issues had hampered the enumeration process. The government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had been requested to devise a strategy for carrying out the census in Kohistan district.
The digital census cost about 34 billion rupees ($220 million) and was funded by the federal and provincial governments.
The PBS received more than 200,000 complaints regarding the census, mostly from political parties, and had redressed most of them.
He said the census data would be used for electoral delimitation, resource allocation, and development planning.
“After the results are out in June, a request will be made to the Council of Common Interests (CCI) to use this data for the election.”
Pakistan last conducted a census in 1998, when its population was 132.4 million. The constitution requires a census every 10 years, but successive governments delayed it due to political and security reasons.
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