Census Delay: Amit Shah Announces Postponement and Self-Enumeration Portal Awaited

The decadal census will be carried out at an appropriate time and it will be announced when it is decided, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Saturday.

"The census will be carried out at an appropriate time. We will make an announcement for it when it is decided," Shah said at a press conference here replying to a question on it.

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-19 outbreak.

The home minister is on a three-day visit to Chhattisgarh during which he discussed the Naxal problem with top civil and security officials of Maoists-hit states on Saturday.

The census operation continues to be on hold and the government has not yet announced the new schedule.

Several opposition parties have been demanding a caste census.

However, so far there has been no announcement by the government on this politically significant issue.

Officials said since general elections took place this year, the census exercise is unlikely to be carried out in 2024 due to time constraints.

Besides, this year's budget has allocated just Rs 1309.46 crore for census surveys and statistics (Rs 578.29 in 2023-24).

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

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

The NPR has been made compulsory for 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 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.