NEW DELHI: Acting on parameters proposed by the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council, the Government on Thursday gave the nod for a census survey identifying caste and religion and the number of people living below the poverty line.
“This fulfils the assurance given by government in Parliament to have caste-based census along with the socio-economic profiling.” Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni said.
The survey, commencing in end June, conducted by the Ministry of Rural Development in association with Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation and Registrar General of India, will go on for six months till December this year.
A poverty census was earlier carried out in 2002 but it would be the first time that this information is clubbed with data on caste and religion. The results of the BPL Census would be utilised in the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-13 to 2016-17).
The enumerators will use low-cost hand-held PC tabs to enter the responses to only two questions on caste and religion—What is your caste and what is your religion?
The data received from all states will be downloaded to a central server and kept confidential. For rural areas, the survey will, by and large, follow recommendations of the N C Saxena committee to identify the poor, said Soni.
For the BPL survey, the rural and urban population will have separate criteria but certain basic indicators to include or exclude households in the BPL category..
“Rural population will be divided into three categories. The first is exclusion category, by which they will be deemed to be removed from the BPL list. Second, there will be automatic inclusion of some groups. The rest will be ranked on the basis of seven deprivation indicators,” said Sanjay Kumar Rakesh, a senior official in the Rural Development ministry.
Survey of urban households, done for the first time, will be classified by three inclusion indicators—residential, social vulnerability and occupational vulnerability.
The survey will be conducted by state government employees, from panchayat members to patwaris (revenue officials) and workers under the Employment Guarantee scheme.