NEW DELHI: The Union Budget’s meagre allocation of Rs 574.80 crore under the head of Census, Survey and Registrar General India is amply indicative that the delayed decadal head count exercise in the country may not be carried out this year too.
This amount is substantially less than the Rs 3,768 crore allotted under the same head in the budget for the financial year 2021-22. The allocation under this head in 2024-25 was Rs 572 crore.
It may be recalled that the Union government in 2019 had approved the proposal for conducting the 2021 national census at a cost of Rs 8,754.23 crore and updating the National Population Register (NPR) at a cost of Rs 3,941.35 crore.
The house listing phase of the census and the exercise to update the NPR were scheduled to be carried out across the country from April 1 to September 30, 2020 but were postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The census operation continues to be on hold and the government has not yet officially announced the new schedule.
Sources said the entire exercise of conducting the census and preparing the NPR is expected to require more than Rs 12,000 crore.
This exercise, whenever it happens, will be the first digital census giving citizens an opportunity to self-enumerate. The NPR has been made compulsory for citizens who want to exercise the right to fill the census form on their own rather than through government enumerators. For this, the census authority has designed a self-enumeration portal which is yet to be launched.