First digital census to help policy makers design Pakistan development trajectory.

MULTAN -- As the first digital census, the 7th in the country's overall history, gets a go-ahead here Wednesday, the updated statistics on the country's population after the completion of the laborious nationwide exercise would help policymakers design Pakistan's development trajectory, says commissioner Amir Khattak while formally opening the census operations.

Flanked by Regional Police Officer (RPO) Multan Captain (Retired) Suhail Chaudhry, Khatak marked a number on a house in Gulgasht colony and made a digital entry on a tablet, to open the census exercise in Multan on Wednesday.

The sixth census that was held in 2017 had put Pakistan's total population at over 27.7 million when the Multan city population was calculated at 1.8 million.

The population of some other big cities in 2017 showed Karachi had a population of 14.9 million, Lahore (11.1 million), Faisalabad (3.2m), Rawalpindi (2m), Gujranwala (2m), Peshawar (1.9m), Hyderabad (1.7m), Islamabad (1m) and Quetta (1m).

The process that began today would unveil how much the population of these cities increased over the course of the last five years.

Commissioner Amir...