Govt to announce national census very soon, details to be made public: Shah

Home Minister Amit Shah said on Tuesday that the government will "very soon" make an announcement for carrying out the census in the country.

"We will announce it very soon," Shah said in response to a question on conducting the decadal census of the Indian population which has been delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Shah, along with I&B Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, was addressing a press conference to mark the 100 days of the third tenure of the NDA government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"We will make all the details public when we announce the census," the Union home minister said to questions on the caste census.

India has conducted the census every 10 years since 1881.

The first phase of this decade's census was expected to begin on April 1, 2020 but had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shah's comments on the census comes amid vociferous demands political parties on conducting a caste census.

In the absence of fresh data, the government agencies are still formulating policies and allocating subsidies based on the data of the 2011 census.

The house listing phase of the census and the exercise to update the National Population Register (NPR) were scheduled to be carried out across the country from April 1 to September 30, 2020 but it was postponed due to the Covid outbreak.

The entire census and the NPR exercise is likely to cost the government more than Rs 12,000 crore, according to officials.

This exercise, whenever it happens, will be the first digital census giving the citizens an opportunity to self-enumerate.

The NPR has been made compulsory for the citizens, who want to exercise the right to fill the census form on their own rather than through government enumerators.

For this, the census authority has designed a self-enumeration portal, which is yet to be launched.

During self-enumeration, Aadhaar or mobile number will be mandatorily collected.

The Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner had prepared 31 questions to be asked. Those questions include whether a family has a telephone, internet connection, mobile or smartphone, bicycle, scooter or motorcycle or moped, whether they own a car, jeep or a van.

The citizens will also be asked what is the cereal they consume in the household, main source of drinking water, main source of lighting, access to toilet, type of toilet, waste water outlet, availability of bathing facility, availability of kitchen and LPG/PNG connection, main fuel used for cooking, availability of radio, transistor, television.

The citizens will also be asked about the predominant material of the floor, wall and roof of the house, condition of the house, total number of persons normally residing in the household, whether the head of the household is a woman, whether the head of the household belongs to the Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe, number of dwelling rooms exclusively in possession of the household, number of married couple(s) living in the household among others.