• The government wants to finish the census before the general elections in 2023.
• Ahsan Iqbal told the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) to speed up the process.
• The next digital census still doesn’t have a set date, so it’s not clear if it will happen at the end of this year or next year.

The next digital census in Pakistan will happen before the next elections in 2023. Many times, the process has been put off, but it may finally happen by the end of this year or early in 2023.

The government wants to finish the census before the general elections in 2023, according to the sources. Ahsan Iqbal, the Federal Minister for Planning, Development, and Special Initiatives, told the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) at a meeting at P-Block Secretariat on Monday to speed up the process of holding a digital census in the country.

Between July 20 and August 3, 2022, the pilot phase of the digital census took place in 417 census blocks in 83 Tehsils in four provinces, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), and Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B).

Minister Ahsan Iqbal said, “We are already on a thin line and any delay in the process would create constitutional crises as the conduct of the next general election of 2023 depended on the census of 2022.”

The chief statistician at PBS told the minister that the digital pilot census went well, but there are still a few problems that will be fixed before the final rollout. He also said that PBS is working closely with NADRA, NTC, and SUPARCO to make sure the census goes well.

He also said that the pilot census didn’t happen until the staff had received the right training and been given tablets.

The next digital census still doesn’t have a set date, so it’s not clear if it will happen at the end of this year or at the beginning of next year. For now, all we know is that the minister told PBS to move the process along quickly so that the census can be done as soon as possible.

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