Census exercise will seek info on toilets, vehicles owned, mobile number

Enumerators of the census will seek the mobile number of the head of the family, information related to toilets, TV, Internet, vehicles owned, source of drinking water besides asking other questions during the houselisting phase of the exercise beginning April 1.

In a notification, the Registrar General and Census Commissioner said the census officers have been directed to ask as many as 31 questions to collect information from every household during the houselisting and housing census exercise scheduled from April 1 to September 30.

The notification, however, made it clear that the mobile number will be sought only for census-related communications and not for any other purpose.

The other information that will be sought from every household is: whether the family owns a telephone, mobile phone, smartphone, bicycle, scooter, motorcycle, moped, car or jeep or van, radio or transistor, television, laptop or computer or has access to the internet.

Information will be sought on building number (municipal or local authority or census number), census house number, predominant material of the floor, wall and roof of the census house, use of census house, condition of the census house, household number, total number of persons normally residing in the household, name of the head of the household and the person's sex.

The numerators will ask whether the head of the household belongs to a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe or Other category, ownership status of the census house, number of dwelling rooms exclusively in possession of the household, number of married couple(s) living in the household, main source of drinking water, availability of drinking water source and main cereal consumed in the household.

Questions related to main source of lighting, whether the family has access to a toilet, the type of toilet, waste water outlet, availability of bathing facility, availability of kitchen and LPG/PNG connection and main fuel used for cooking will also be asked by the enumerators, the notification said.

The 2021 census will be conducted through a mobile phone application, moving away from the traditional pen and paper.

The census will have its reference date as March 1, 2021, but for snow-bound Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand it will be October 1, 2020.

The central government has also decided to prepare a National Population Register (NPR) by September 2020 which will be carried out along with the houselisting phase of the census.

The NPR will be a list of usual residents of the country.