The Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, Mritunjay Kumar Narayan, has reassured the public that individual data collected during the upcoming census will remain confidential and cannot be used for any purpose other than statistical aggregation.
Odisha and Uttar Pradesh are among the first to roll out the digital exercise.
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.
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.
"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.
Although the Disaster Management Act for Covid containment measures, considered a hindrance in conducting the census, was withdrawn in March this year the Centre has not taken any further action on conducting the much-delayed population enumeration.
The Centre Monday urged the Supreme Court not to invest time in examining the constitutional validity of the penal law on sedition, saying it has decided to re-examine and re-consider the provision which can only be done before the competent forum.
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