ISLAMABAD - The federal government is planning to summon another meeting of the Council of Common Interests this month to address the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan’s reservations regarding a third-party audit of census blocks, sources said.
The MQM-P has demanded, in and outside Parliament, to increase the census blocks for audit from one percent to five percent.
Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, on the floor of the House a couple of days back, assured to summon the CCI to remove the MQM-P’s reservations.
MQM-P chief Farooq Sattar recently tweeted: “We protested against census 2017 because of discrepancies. Hence, moved to SC. Finally, NA approved our proposal of 3rd party audit of five blocks of census 2017 results. While recommending the decision we hope that a transparent audit takes place for the stable future of Pakistan,”.
Sattar expressed these reservations at the parliamentary leaders’ meeting chaired by NA Speaker Ayaz Sadiq besides discussing them during the recent National Assembly proceedings when a constitutional amendment about delimitation of constituencies was taken up.
The Centre and the provinces at the recently held CCI meeting developed consensus on expediting delimitation process and holding the next general election on time.
Removing reservations of Sindh, the CCI meeting agreed to carry out delimitation process on the basis of provisional results of population census.
The National Assembly, the other day, passed constitutional amendment regarding ‘fresh delimitation of constituencies’ on the basis of 6th population census’ provisional results, with 242 votes in favour. The Senate could not take up the constitutional amendment due to the lack of the required strength (69 senators). This amendment bill will again be presented in the Senate on Monday.
The deadlock emerged at the 48th National Assembly session when the government thrice failed to get the constitutional amendment passed. The PPP was not ready to vote for the amendment unless the CCI discussed the issue.
When contacted, Inter-Provincial Coordination Minister Riaz Pirzada said that the government addressed the reservations of parties with the consensus of four provinces at the CCI huddle last week.