The deadlock over a constitutional amendment on delimitation appears to have ended as Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Friday reportedly accepted the PPP's demand for a third-party audit of five per cent of the census blocks in Sindh.

The PPP was of the view that if the "faulty" methodology used in the census were to be repeated in the post enumeration survey (PES) of the selected blocks by the same organisation which had carried out the census, the results would once again become controversial.

In a meeting attended by PPP Senator Aitzaz Ahsan, Leader of the House in Senate Raja Zafarul Haq, Taj Haider, Mushahid Hussain Syed, Ilyas Bilour and others, PM Abbasi conceded to the demand. It was also decided to form a committee comprising Senators Taj Haider, Mushahid Hussain Syed, Hasil Bizenjo and Mushahidullah Khan to oversee the process.

It was subsequently decided that the constitutional amendment would be tabled in Senate on December 19.

"All political parties want elections to be held on time," Senator Ahsan said after the meeting.

There is a consensus among political parties that for the purposes of the next general elections and by-polls, the allocation of National Assembly seats should be made on the basis of provisional results of the census without changing the existing total number of general seats (272) and women’s seats (60) and retaining the the current share of Fata (12).

According to the proposed reallocation, the seats will increase for Balochistan (2 general seats + 1 woman seat), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (4+1) and the federal capital (1+0), but these increases will be adjusted with the seats for Punjab (-7 and -2). The seats for Sindh will remain the same.

The Council of Common Interests (CCI) had at a meeting on Nov 13 approved the publication of provisional results of the census. The CCI had also decided initially that a third-party validation would be carried out in 1pc census blocks. The proportion of census blocks where the re-verification exercise was to be carried out was changed to 5pc on the MQM’s demand when the bill was passed by the National Assembly.