ISLAMABAD – Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has called a meeting of the Council of Common Interest (CCI) tomorrow (August) to discuss the hot issue regarding the approval of the 2023 digital census held earlier this year.
The meeting will start at 12:00pm when the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) would submit its report on the first-ever digital Population and Housing Census conducted in 2023.
If the CCI approves the census 2023, it will cause a delay of at least three to four months in the upcoming elections.
The tenure of the current assembly is set to end on August 12. If the assembly is dissolved on the competition of tenure, the elections, as per the constitution, will be held in sixty days.
However, the prime minister has told his ruling partners at a dinner on Thursday that the National Assembly would be dissolved prematurely on August 9. The Constitution states that elections should be held within 90 days in case assemblies are dissolved before the competition of their term.
On a separate occasion, the premier had hinted that fresh general elections would be held on the basis of the 2023 census.
Earlier, there were reports that the premier will chair CCI meeting on August 2, but it didn’t happen.
The latest census results show that the total population stands around less than 250 million but it has crossed 240 million mark. The PBS has also completed the post enumeration survey for verifying the results of first-ever digital population census in selected blocks of 48 districts.
Amid all that, there are complaints of overcounting in rural parts and less counting in urban areas of Sindh.
