The Indian government has released the list of questions to be asked during the first phase of the Census 2027, focusing on houselisting and housing enumeration. The survey will cover various aspects of housing conditions, household characteristics, and access to basic amenities.
The government wants to complete the operations rapidly, including the actual counting of people, by February next year, reports Subhomoy Bhattacharjee.
'There will be not less than 31 lakh people working in the census process.'
A special dedicated web portal will be launched for self-enumeration during the upcoming Census, which will be available for both phases of the national enumeration exercise, officials said Monday.
India's decadal census is likely to be further delayed after the budget allocated only Rs 574.80 crore for the exercise, a significant reduction from previous years. The census, originally scheduled for 2021, has been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the government has not yet announced a new schedule. The budget allocation suggests that the exercise may not be carried out even after the delay. The upcoming census will be the first digital census, allowing citizens to self-enumerate using a dedicated portal. The exercise will be made compulsory for citizens who wish to self-enumerate, and Aadhaar or mobile numbers will be required. The census will include questions on household demographics, amenities, and economic status.
Census exercise with caste enumeration will be carried out with the reference date of October 1, 2026, in snow-bound areas like Ladakh and of March 1, 2027, in the rest of the country, the Home Ministry announced on Wednesday.
The census will be carried out with a reference date of October 1, 2026 in snow-bound areas like Ladakh and March 1, 2027 in the rest of the country, the notification said.
According to norms, census can be conducted only three months after the freezing of boundary limits of administrative units such as districts, sub-districts, tehsils, talukas and police stations.
The entire census and NPR exercise is likely to cost the government over Rs 12,000 crore, the officials said.
Hit by a shortage of officers, the government has decided to hire its retired employees to contribute in the conduct of the mammoth Census exercise covering 1.2 billion residents spread over 35 states and Union Territories.
The interim budget 2024-24 on Thursday allocated Rs 1,277.80 crore for census, a significant reduction from 2021-22 when Rs 3,768 crore was allocated and an indication that the exercise may not be carried out even after three years of delay.
The government has to specify what it intends to do with caste census data. It will be closely tracked if the government would simultaneously move towards removing the present 50% bar on reservations using means which are permitted in law. If this is not done, the entire exercise will become meaningless and could boomerang on the BJP, observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
While data can empower communities, it reinforces identities, making local politics more caste-centric, with decisions increasingly contested on the grounds of representation.
Such dynamics could lead to shifting alliances and, in the worst case, local governance getting paralysed as each group demands proportional power-sharing, explain Amitabh Kundu and Mehebub Rahaman.
With most parties pushing for a caste-based census, the government does not seem to be averse to such an exercise during the process to enumerate the country's populace that began recently.
'The general elections in May 2024 may not have any impact on the Census.'
Whenever the Census operation resumes, it will capture the impact of Covid-19 to a large extent, including the extra-lethal second wave, reports Abhishek Waghmare.
The CAA was enacted in December 2019 for granting Indian nationality to persecuted non-Muslim migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who came to India on or before December 31, 2014. These include Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians.
"In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (2) of section 1 of the Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Act, 2023 (20 of 2023), the central government hereby appoints the 1st day of October, 2023, as the date on which the provisions of the said Act shall come into force," according to a notification issued by Mritunjay Kumar Narayan, Registrar General and Census Commissioner.
Rajasthan Chief Secretary D B Gupta said he and the representatives of a few other states raised objections to a few questions to be asked by enumerators during the NPR exercise. He said the central government officials told them that answers to all such questions are not mandatory.
The extension comes three days after the Centre constituted a high-level committee under the chairmanship of Registrar General and Census Commissioner Vivek Joshi with Additional Secretary in the Union Home Ministry Piyush Goyal as its Member-Secretary.
Complaints against Prateek Hajela on such issues were raised earlier by others also.
The ministry has got Rs 1,03,927 crore for 2019-20 which is 4.9 per cent more than Rs 99,034 crore given in 2018-19.
Isn't National Intelligence Grid and UIDAI engineered by vested interests, asks Gopal Krishna.
Aadhaar-related schemes and the Aadhaar Act exist on the assumption that Right to Privacy is not a Fundamental Right.
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