LAHORE, April 22: More than half of Punjab has been dropped and left unlisted in the ongoing house-listing census process as the Population Census Organization lacks the staff and expertise for the task, claims the Punjabi Language Movement.

Speaking at a press conference here on Friday, convener Nazeer Kahut alleged that “insufficient” and “disorganized” enumerator of the organization failed to ensure complete coverage of each and every housing unit in Punjab in the given time.

He feared that the “grave irregularity” was set to result in drastically reducing Punjab’s population at the end of the census and consequently causing irreparable damage to the province’s interests both at federal and provincial level.

Rejecting the house-listing process, he said the house census in almost half of Punjab could not be initiated either for lack of staff shortage or with the “ill-intent” to reduce the province’s population.

Challenging the census data, he said he was ready to prove it wrong through field check in the presence of media, judiciary, army and United Nations’ observers.

Mr Kahut alleged that the 1972 “fraud” pattern was being repeated by computerized manipulation of population figures as the authorities failed to cover the province with more than 100 million population.

He said the “engineered” house-listing was aimed at reducing province’s population to divide Punjab on a lingual basis and to deprive it of its due share in the NFC award and other grants, civil service and jobs in federal financial institutions, as well as seats in parliament.

Pointing out irregularities in the past five censuses, he claimed that in the 1951 census the Punjabi speaking people were 67.08 per cent of the total population, in 1961 it was reduced to 66.39 per cent, in 1972 to 66.11 per cent.

He said in 1982, the Punjabi population was drastically reduced to 48.17 per cent and in 1998 to 44.15 per cent as never in the history of any country the linguistic identity or ethnic groups had seen such a drastic fall in its population.

The Punjabi Movement leader demanded putting an end to “Seraikilisation of Punjab” and removing Seraiki from the census form declaring it a dialect like various dialects of Sindhi, Balochi and Pushto.

He sought a 30-day extension in the house listing period and increasing the number of enumerators to 100,000 in Punjab for covering the whole province.

He demanded intervention of the judiciary and the army “for the sake of justice and to ensure a free and transparent house-listing and population census”.

The Dawn: April 23, 2011