New Delhi: The Centre decided to conduct Census 2021 in two phases — the Houselisting and Housing Census during April-September 2020 and the Population Enumeration during February 9 to 28, 2021, Minister of State for Home Affairs informed the Parliament on Wednesday.
In a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha, Rai said that it was also decided to update the National Population Register (NPR) under the Citizenship Act, 1955 along with the first phase of Census. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, the first phase of Census, updation of NPR and other related field activities have been postponed, as per a PIB media release.
Mobile applications for the collection of data and a portal for management and monitoring of various Census-related activities have been developed.
Rai further said that no technical assistance has been obtained from any international agency for conducting Census operations in the field and the role of international agencies is limited to support in the development of publicity material and e-learning training modules by United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), UN WOMEN and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
The Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011 was conducted by the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) and the then Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA) in rural and urban areas respectively.
The raw caste data has been provided to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MoSJE) for the classification and categorization of the data. As informed by MoSJE, there is no proposal to release the caste data at this stage, Rai said.
The Union of India, after independence, decided as a matter of policy not to enumerate caste wise population other than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
