KARACHI: The Sindh High Court asked the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP)’s lawyer to satisfy it with regard to the maintainability of the petition filed by them against ‘lack of transparency’ in the procedure of the ongoing census.
A two-judge bench issued notices to the respondent authorities to file their response to the petition by tillApril 03.
The PPP leaders, Farhatullah Babar and leader Maula Bux Chandio, filed the petition seeking directives for the authorities concerned for carrying out census in a transparent manner.
The petitioners named secretary statistic division, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, provincial census commissioner for Sindh and Sindh chief secretary as respondents.
The petitioners’ lawyer, Farooq H Naiq, submitted that the census was being carried out in a manner which lacked transparency. “To ensure transparency and mak
e the public aware of the data collected about them, they
should have access to it so that they could re-check
and verify if the relevant census enumerator had correctly mentioned the information as provided by them.”
Babar stated that there
should also be a system to resolv
e the grievance of the public if any information given by them was wrongly mentioned in the Form -II.
He suggested that neutral and impartial enumerators
should be employed to engage public participation in the census process. Besides, data
should be collected from adult members of the family with proper receipt.
He added that if any house or members of house had been left out from counting during the census process, effective mechanism be put in place to ensure timely resolution of
complaints.
He said Article 19-A of the Constitution provided for the basic right of access to information while adding that assistant commissioners who have been notified as census district officers
should maintain record of data in their respective offic
es and the same
should be accessible to the public at large.
Babar prayed to the court to direct authorities to conduct the census in line with international standards and norms.
He pleaded that illegal immigrants and internal displace persons
should be counted separately in the province and the authorities
should set up emergency
complaint centre accessible to the public where their grievances regarding wrong, false and fabricated enumeration may be addressed in an effective manner.
