Upcoming census will be digital, with provision for self-enumeration: Home Ministry  

Representative image

The upcoming census will be India’s first digital census and there will be provisions for self-enumeration, the Home Ministry informed the Lok Sabha on August 10.

The Ministry of Home said: “The forthcoming census will be the first digital census and there is a provision for self-enumeration. A mobile application for collecting data and a census portal for management and monitoring of various census-related activities have been developed.”

Earlier, during Budget Session 2021, Centre had announced the allocation of Rs 3,726 crore for the upcoming digital census.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah had said in 2019: “Census data will be collected through a mobile app. This is for the first time that the mobile app will be used for the census exercise. India will be moving from the pen and paper census to digital data, which will be a big revolution in the country’s census exercise.”

MoS Home Nityanand Rai further informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply to a question on Census 2021: “There is no proposal to release caste data at this stage.”

Notably, Bharatiya Janata Party ally and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has been clamouring for a caste-based census. BJP ally Apna Dal, too, has been urging the Centre to conduct the same. That apart, the National Commission for Backward Classes has also been pushing the Narendra Modi government to collect data on the country’s OBC population while conducting Census 2021.