Shah reviews preparation for Census

Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday reviewed the preparation for the forthcoming Census exercise with Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan and Registrar General of India (RGI) Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan.

The Tribune had reported about the review meeting on June 15.

The notification to conduct the Census will be published in the official gazette on June 16.

A senior official said the notification would only officially announce the commencement of the work, details of which were given out through a press release issued earlier this month.

“Normally, the commencement of the Census work is announced through a gazette notification. However, this time as it has got delayed, therefore a press release was issued prior to the issuance of the notification," the official said.

During the meeting, held at Shah’s residence on Sunday evening, the finer details of the exercise were discussed and the Home Minister was briefed about the process, official sources said.

The Census will be conducted in two phases. In the phase one, which will be Houselisting Operation (HLO), the housing conditions, assets and amenities of each household will be collected. In the second phase — Population Enumeration (PE) — the demographic, socio-economic, cultural and other details of every person in each household will be collected. In the Census, caste enumeration will also be done.

For the exercise, about 34 lakh enumerators and supervisors and around 1.3 lakh Census functionaries will be deployed.

This is the 16th Census since the beginning and eighth after the Independence.

The ensuing Census will be conducted through digital means using mobile applications. Provision of self-enumeration would also be made available to the people.

Very stringent data security measures would be kept in place to ensure data security at the time of collection, transmission and storage, officials said.

According to sources, the Home Secretary and the RGI are said to have explained to Shah about the preparations done for the work, which had earlier got delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

India