Digital census: It will be an excuse to delay elections of KPK and Punjab
According to Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, new digital census will start on March 1 and will continue till April 1. Earlier it was decided to conduct census on February 1.
Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has issued a notification to start the seventh census and house enumeration across the country from March 1. The census will be conducted digitally, which will last for a month, which obviously means that the general elections in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa may be delayed.
According to the notification of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, the digital census, which started on March 1, will end on April 1.
Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, which works under the Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives, approved the conduct of the census during the 49th meeting of the Council of Common Interests (CCI) held on January 13.
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Prior to the decision, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics had organized three levels of training to conduct the census. Training of Master Trainers in Islamabad; Training of Trainers at Divisional Level (TOTS); and included the training of enumerators (TOEs) at the census district level.
According to the notification issued by the Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives, the department successfully conducted Master Trainers Training and Divisional Trainers Training on December 15 and 23 last year respectively. While three batches of enumerators were trained from January 7 to 21 this year, in which the local administration played an important role.
Pakistan Statistics Authority said that the census field operation was earlier planned to be conducted from February 1 to March 4, 2023.
Due to some unavoidable reasons and keeping in view the ground realities, the Council of Common Interests (CCI) decided in the fifth progress review session of the Census Monitoring Committee (CMC). The meeting was held on January 17, 2023.
According to 2017 census, population of Pakistan is 207.68 million
The 2017 census was conducted 19 years after the last census was conducted in 1998, according to the 2017 census, the population of Pakistan was 207.68 million people. From 1998 to 2017, the population grew at a rate of 2.40 percent. Of which 106.3 million are male and 101.3 million are female.
In 2017, Punjab had the highest population share at 52.96%, followed by Sindh at 23.04%, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at 14.69%, Balochistan at 5.94% and FATA and Islamabad at 2.40% and 0.96% respectively.
According to the 2017 results, the highest population density per square kilometer is in Islamabad with 2,211 people per square kilometer and the lowest in Balochistan with 35.53 people per square kilometer. The highest sex ratio is 110.68 in Islamabad and the lowest is 102.4 in KP.
According to the 2017 census, a large proportion of the population in the country consists of people aged 15 to 64 years. The ratio of people aged 15 years is 53.40% while the ratio of people aged 64 years is 40.31%.
According to the 2017 census, 63.56 percent of people live in urban areas while 36.44 percent of people live in rural areas.
