MHA to hold important meeting on Census, NPR today, West Bengal to skip it

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Friday will hold an important meeting on Census and National Population Register (NPR) in the national capital. All states Chief secretaries will be participating in the conference except West Bengal. The meeting will be chaired by Minister of State Home Affairs, Nityanand Rai. The meeting will be held at Ambedkar Bhawan in Delhi.

The Census for 2021 will be held in two phases, in the first phase which begins from April 1 to September 30, 2020, the data will be compiled for house listing with household-specific information like who is the head of the house, how many people live in the house, what are the facilities in the house, while in the second phase, which will begin from February 2021, the questions will be individual specific. 

On January 15 (Wednesday), government sources told news agency ANI had said that all states have issued re-notification of the NPR, while Kerala and West Bengal have communicated to the Centre to put it on hold. Sources had further shared that among the new additions in 2021 are that the question related to the gender of head of the household had `male or female` options in 2011, but this time `transgender` option has been added.

Also, there was a question on "Toilet within the premise" in 2011, but this time enumerators will ask about the "access to the toilet" and they will ask whether the toilet is shared, exclusive for the family or public, sources said. Unlike 2011, availing of banking facilities will be asked in the second phase this time.

Even as uncertainty over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) looms across the country, the MHA has clarified that the Census data will not seek any documentary proofs. The spokesperson for the MHA said, "No documents would be asked by the enumerators for the NPR exercise. If the respondents want to present documents for verification, they are free to do so. There would be no compulsion from the side of the enumerators."

For the first time, this will be a digital census in which officers will be able to calculate data via mobile, there will be a special app for census developed by the government which the officers can use by downloading on their mobile phones. Training will be done in four phases. National trainer, master trainer, field trainer and enumerator will be given training at these four levels.

In the first phase, 30 lakh employees will be assigned for this work, last time the counting officer got Rs 5,500. This time the counting officer will include house listing, census and National Population Register, so he will get Rs 25,000.

The census survey will include National Population Register (NPR) too. The NPR and census forms will be different. In the first phase of the census and NPR, the household will have to confirm the information given by them. No biometric is be taken in NPR, no paper will be sought either. You just have to submit the correct information.

This time these new questions will be included in NPR like; "What is mother tongue, where was the last time the owner of the house was living, place of birth, information on parents?"

The house listing process will have 34 questions covering 31 topics. According to the census reports of Indian Census 2011, the population of India was 1,210,854,977.