India / Census work to begin this year: MHA to parliamentary panel

NEW DELHI: The home ministry has informed a parliamentary panel that Census fieldwork, stalled due to Covid-19 pandemic, may begin this year and indicated a broad, five-year schedule from 2020-21 to 2024-25 covering pre-test for mobile application and Census portal, houselisting and NPR work, population enumeration, release of provisional census data and primary census abstracts (PCA) and, finally, release of more than 250 census data tables.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, in its report on the demands for grants for the ministry, said the conduct of pre-test for census and National Population Register (NPR) to test the mobile app and CMMS portal was scheduled to be done during 2020-21.

The fieldwork for the first phase of census 2021 will be carried out during 2021-22 even though timelines are yet to be finalised. During this phase, data on housing conditions, household amenities and assets possessed by the households will be collected. NPR exercise will be carried out simultaneously with this phase of the Census.

As per the revised schedule, fieldwork for the population enumeration phase of the census will be done in 2022-23 even though no timelines has been fixed yet. During 2022-23, census work on demography, religion, SC and ST population, language, literacy and education, economic activity, migration and fertility will also be carried out.

In 2023-24, results of the provisional census data, primary census abstracts (PCA) providing village-level data on important indicators will be released. Finally, in 2024-25, release of more than 250 census tables is scheduled.