Census 2027 to include self enumeration option says union home ministry

Census 2027 to include self enumeration option says union home ministry

Union home minister Amit Shah on Sunday reviewed preparations for the Census, for which a formal notification will be issued on Monday, the Union home ministry said on Sunday while reiterating that the upcoming exercise will have the option of self-enumeration.

The ministry further said that Census 2027 will be conducted through digital means and that very stringent data security measures would be put in place to ensure data security at the time of collection, transmission and storage.

As reported by HT at that time, the government had issued Census (Amendment) Rules, 2022 on March 11, 2022 to allow self-enumeration online. Union minister of state for home affairs Nityanand Rai had also informed the Rajya Sabha in July 2022, as reported by HT then, that it will be the first digital Census with a provision for self-enumeration.

The office of the registrar general of India (ORGI) has already developed a web-based portal called Self Enumeration (SE) Portal, which allows the respondents to view and update the information of their households members. The SE portal, according to officials, will be closed for changes, a few days prior to the census exercise start date. The objective of the portal is to digitize the process of capturing the census data, as the respondents can update the details of their family members online without the help of an enumerator

The SE portal will be accessible with authentication based on pre-filled information available with the ORGI and a one-time password (OTP) sent to the registered mobile number(s). The respondent will be allowed to change the family details, and add new family members and those family members who are not part of the household shall be marked as moved-out or died, said an officer explaining the process.

A second officer said that initially, it was decided that during the first phase of the census i.e. house-listing operations (HLO), the mobile number from the willing household would be collected, which may be used for giving them access for self-enumeration during the second phase of self-enumeration i.e. population enumeration (PE). Later, this officer said, when the Census and National Population Register (NPR) updation exercise was postponed due to Covid-19, it was decided to extend the self-enumeration facility for house-listing also. SE option for PE will be given to all those households who will provide mobile numbers during HLO phase whether SE is done or not during the first phase, he added.

The MHA said on Sunday, “Shah reviewed the preparation for the forthcoming Census with the Union home secretary (Govind Mohan), Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India (Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan) and other senior officials in New Delhi today. The notification to conduct the Census will be published in the official gazette on June 16”.

The government had, last week, announced that the much-delayed Census exercise, which will include caste enumeration, will be completed by March 1, 2027. Officials have said that while the data collection would be over by March 1, 2027, the entire exercise to collate the data and publish it will take two to three more years.

The 16th Census will be conducted in two phases. In phase one i.e. house-listing operation (HLO), the housing conditions, assets and amenities of each household will be collected. Subsequently, in the second phase i.e. population enumeration (PE), the demographic, socio-economic, cultural and other details of every person in each household will be collected.

The MHA said on Sunday that about 34 lakh enumerators and supervisors as well as and around 1.3 lakh Census functionaries would be deployed for the exercise.

It added that the upcoming census “will be conducted through digital means using mobile applications”.

“Provision of self-enumeration would also be made available to the people,” it said.

On data security, the MHA said “very stringent data security measures would be kept in place to ensure data security at the time of collection, transmission and storage”.

The government has defended the delay by saying that countries which conducted Census immediately after Covid-19 faced issues on “quality and coverage” of census data.