KARACHI: The Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Syed Aminul Haque on Thursday said that general elections in the country would be conducted after population census and subsequent fresh delimitation of electoral constituencies.
The minister, while addressing the inaugural ceremony of the digital school in Orangi Town of Karachi and later talking to media persons, said that a transparent and all-inclusive population census was a longstanding demand of MQM Pakistan as well as other political parties so that every citizen could be counted in.
The government has decided to conduct digital census and all the arrangements for the first-ever digital census in Pakistan have been completed, he said adding that the first phase of the census, data collection, would be completed in March while comprehensive census results would be available by the end August this year.
Following the census exercise, new delimitation would be carried out for the conduct of the next general elections, he maintained adding that general elections in the country could not be announced in haste and people who were dreaming of early election have to wait for the right time.
Aminul Haque said that Muttahida Qoumi Movement Pakistan was going to be united on the day as disgruntled leaders would join the party again and the entire leadership would move forward to contest jointly the next elections under a single election symbol of ‘kite’.
Responding to a query he said that MQM is a democratic party that always stood with its workers, supporters and voters and won a number of elections on the symbol of kite. MQM-P will turn successful whenever there would be free and fair elections, he claimed adding that in past, less-known MQM workers knocked out Jamaat Islami leader Hafiz Naeem ur Rehman and PTI’s Ali Zaidi in elections and it was evident that MQM will be successful in future.
To another question, he said that MQM had reservations about delimitation for local government elections and it moved the apex courts in this regard while the Election Commission of Pakistan was also approached.
