The Central government has hinted the State government that it could initiate process for creation of new municipalities, gram panchayats and other bodies, if any, before the commencement of exercise for preparing data for the next decennial census — Census 2021.
The Directorate of Census under the Union Home Ministry, in a circular issued recently, has said that there would be a freeze on the creation of new urban/rural bodies and reorganisation of the existing ones from the midnight of December 31, 2019.
New districts included
The department, according to sources, has commenced preparatory work for the next census operations which will be based on the 31 reorganised districts instead of the 10 districts in previous census. “The directorate has informed that boundaries of the 31 districts have been fixed and the census operations will be taken up accordingly,” a senior official said. The communication allays apprehensions in some quarters that the Centre had not given its consent yet for the reorganisation of the districts, the official said. The directorate had already issued a circular seeking information pertaining to the changes that had been made in the districts between 2010-17 and it was accordingly communicated. Census operations will commence in January 2020 with officials taking up a door-to-door survey of all households in the State.
Array of information
Huge array of information will be collected on various subjects like social, demographic, economic and related aspects. The survey will also cover details about the households and about housing condition, amenities and assets of individuals. This would then be followed by detailed population survey.
The directorate is said to be examining the feasibility of the proposals for deploying teams equipped with tabs for collection of data rather than depending on manual entries which would be a cumbersome process. A decision on this would be taken soon after a team of Central officials hold discussions with their counterparts of the General Administration Department which will be the nodal agency for overseeing the progress of the census operations.