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Census 2001 begins

Over two million enumerators fanned out on Friday across the length and breadth of the country to carry out a population census, one of the biggest administrative exercises in the world covering a billion people.

The census operations formally began with enumerators led by Registrar General and Census Commissioner J K Banthia visiting President K R Narayanan at Rashtrapati Bhavan at 1100 hrs.

Later, Banthia and his team called on Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

During the 20-day exercise, the sixth since Independence, trained enumerators would visit about 20 million households in over 6.5 lakh villages and 5,500 towns and cities.

Estimated to cost roughly over Rs 10 billion, the reference date of the census will be midnight of March 1, 2001. The count of homeless people would be taken on the night of February 28, 2001.

The population enumeration in Jammu and Kashmir and snow-bound areas of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh has already been completed.

The Ist phase of house-listing was completed between April and September 2000.

The census will be carried as per schedule in Gujarat, except in Kutch and parts of Rajkot and Jamnagar districts, the areas worst-affected in last month's devastating earthquake.

According to Banthia, the projected population of the country is 1.01 billion.

The census would provide comprehensive data on demography, economic activities, literacy and education, housing and household amenities, urbanisation, fertility and mortality, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, languages and religions and migration.

The first census in India was held non-synchronously in 1872, while the last was held in 1991.

PTI

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