By Uzma Zafar
ISLAMABAD: The federal cabinet has decided to summon a meeting of the Council of Common Interest (CCI) in the last week of the current month or in the first week of April.According to details the meeting would be attended by all four chief ministers of the provinces, which is expected to give go-ahead for the release of final census results.
Agencies added that the annual report of the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) will also be presented before the CCI. The meeting will review the implementation of the decisions earlier taken by the forum.
In this context provinces have been informed through letters. In the last meeting of the CCI chaired by PM Imran Khan, the forum had approved the renewable energy policy 2019.
According to a handout issued regarding the meeting, the session headed by Imran Khan was attended by federal ministers, attorney general, and other concerned officials to review an eight-point agenda.
Last year government ally MQM-P leader Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui said that the people of Sindh are left with no other option but to take to the streets to protest the Centre’s decision to approve the controversial census of 2017.
He was addressing a press conference in Islamabad during which he maintained that the population of Sindh’s major cities was shown to be 25% less than the actual count in the census, adding that the report is riddled with inaccuracies.
“Our doubts related to the inaccuracy of the 2017 census have proven to be true now,” he said. “We had gone to courts to register our concerns even before the census had begun.”
Siddiqui’s comments came after the federal cabinet on Wednesday authorised the submission of the Sixth Population and Housing Census 2017 report for the final approval of the Council of Common Interests.
Cabinet’s also decided to bypass an agreement with the parliamentary leaders of the Senate to correct the highly controversial census 2017 results through a recount of the population in 5% randomly selected population blocks.
“We had formed a coalition with the government on the basis of the census,” Siddiqui said. “Despite MQM’s reservations against the results of the census, the federal government went ahead and approved it.”
