The Supreme Court has decided to take up Pak Sarzameen Party's petition to ascertain seats of National Assembly and Sindh provincial assembly from Karachi and Hyderabad Divisions on the basis of NADRA data after the elections 2018.
Hearing an appeal filed by PSP chairman Mustafa Kamal, Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar Friday overruled the objections raised by the Supreme Court registrar office and ordered to fix the case in the open court. However, the Chief Justice told Mustafa Kamal that his petition would be taken up after the general elections. The PSP chief shared this information with media after the hearing. He said he had filed the petition under Article 184 (3) of the Constitution, asking the court to call for record and data from Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) and Census Commission to ascertain the exact position of Sindh census, delimitations and allocation of seats in the National Assembly and provincial assembly.
He has prayed the court to declare the Rule 8 of Election Act, 2017, Section 28 of General Statistics (Re-Organization) Act 2011, along with corresponding section of Census Ordinance 1959 as ultra vires of the Constitution of Pakistan and to be reframed under the light of relevant provision of the Constitution.
The apex court was also asked to direct Election Commission of Pakistan to ascertain seats of National Assembly and Sindh Assembly from Karachi and Hyderabad division on the basis of NADRA data.
He also sought the SC directions to create special delimitation status under Section 20 for all districts of Karachi and for the allocation of seats on freshly available data of the NADRA. He requested the court to declare all six districts of Karachi as one unit as treated in 1998 census and delimit the same for the national and provincial assemblies.
The PBS on 28-08-2017 announced sixth housing and population census data and according to that, total population of the country is 207,774,520 living in 32,205,111 households. He claimed that the PBS results showed an increase of 63% from the last census held in 1998 with an annual growth rate of 2.4 percent in population and 6.4 percent in average household size. He said according to the PBS results, 30.45 million people live in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, five million in erstwhile Federal Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), 47.9 million in Sindh, 12 million in Balochistan, two million in the federal capital and 110 million in Punjab.
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