Opposition groups have long accused the Sunni-controlled government of secretly naturalising Sunni residents in a bid to alter the demographic balance of the tiny Gulf state, which has a Shiite majority.
A request to grill Minister for Cabinet Affairs Sheikh Ahmad bin Atiyatullah al-Khalifa, who heads the Central Information Organisation (CIO), was presented to the office of the parliament speaker, "and we expect to receive a response by next week," MP Khalil al-Marzuk told AFP.
Marzuk is deputy head of the parliamentary bloc of the Islamic National Accord Association (INAA), the main Shiite political formation, which has asked to question Bin Atiyatullah.
The decision lies with a committee of MPs attached to the speaker’s office.
Speaking after a parliament session, Marzouk said that while official figures put Bahrain’s population at 750,000, including foreigners, it emerged from a previous questioning of the minister that the figure has jumped to more than one million.
Bin Atiyatullah stated that "Bahrainis number around 550,000 (of those) and the rest are foreigners … which means that there has been an unnatural growth in the number of Bahrainis over the past six years," Marzouk said.
A 2001 census put the size of the population at 650,604, of whom 405,667 were Bahrainis. According to new statistics posted on the CIO’s website, the population grew to 1,046,814 by the end of 2007, including 529,446 Bahrainis and 517,368 expatriates.
The Bahraini government insists that its naturalisation policy follows existing rules, but opposition groups have staged several demonstrations over the past few years in protest at what they call "political naturalisation" favouring Sunnis.
Parliament has been virtually crippled since the INAA unsuccessfully sought in February to grill Bin Atiyatullah over allegations he was involved in a secret plot to maintain Sunni domination of the Gulf archipelago and marginalise the Shiite majority.
The allegations were made in a 2006 report by a Sudanese-born British former government adviser, who was later accused of spying for a foreign country and expelled from Bahrain.
The INAA, headed by Shiite cleric Sheikh Ali Salman, holds 17 of parliament’s 40 seats.
On Tuesday, the house again failed to discuss any of the items on its agenda, but it approved an urgent aid totalling 40 million dinars (106 million dollars) allocated by the government to help Bahrainis cope with the rising cost of living.
