Cabinet approves revision of cost of SECC 2011

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) today approved the proposal of the Department of Rural Development for cost revision of the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011.
The SECC 2011 project was concluded on March 31, 2016.
The proposal provides for revising the cost of SECC 2011 to Rs 4,893.60 crore, from the approved estimated expenditure of Rs 3,543.29 crore within the indicative cost of Rs 4,000 crore as cleared by the government, an official statement said.
It also provided for approval of time and cost overrun and consequential revision in the upper limit of cost per record to the consortium of central public sector undertakings, the statement added.

The government, according to the statement, has been spending a large sum of money on poverty alleviation and welfare programmes in rural and urban areas of the country to assist the poor and the marginalised of society.
"The SECC has paved the way for better targeting of the poor and evidence-based targeted intervention for ameliorating conditions of poor households," it said.

The statement noted that before the availability of SECC data, correct identification of eligible beneficiaries was a major challenge.
"Accusation of bias in the BPL list affected coverage of poorest of the poor," it pointed out.
SECC data are based on information furnished by households. Households were given opportunity to raise claims and objections on SECC enumerated and published data.

Ranking of households is made through a three-step process involving 13 exclusion parameters for identifying not-poor, five automatic inclusion parameters for identifying the poorest of the poor and seven deprivation criteria for identifying poor households.
The central government has advised states to use this process, SECC data and the TIN number of households for identification of the poor under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana (DAY), the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana-Gramin (PMAY-G), and the like.
Before the availability of SECC 2011 data, the below poverty line (BPL) list prepared in 2002 by states and UTs was used for identifying beneficiaries of development programmes and schemes.

It was decided by the government on March 2011 to launch a Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 to get data to rank households for receiving benefits from the government.