Displacement In Balochistan: Mengal renews plea for census delay

According to Mengal, up to 60 per cent of the population has moved to other provinces

QUETTA: Balochistan National Party (BNP) chief Sardar Akhtar Mengal has renewed an appeal for deferring the census in Balochistan following what he calls a “mass displacement” of the population triggered by a decade of instability in the province.



According to Mengal, up to 60% of the population has moved to other provinces in the wake of instability triggered in 2005. “To go ahead with the census under such circumstances is tantamount to the collective suicide of Baloch people,” he told a tribal Jirga held in Quetta on Saturday.

He claimed that nearly 80 per cent of Sui and Awaran’s population and 40 per cent people from Kech, Panjgur, and Bolan have moved to safer places due to lawlessness, citing data provided by the concerned deputy Commissioners.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 19^th, 2017.