Photographs: PIB
President Pratibha Patil was the first of a billion-plus population in the country to be counted on Wednesday as lakhs of enumerators fanned out in a gigantic effort to document every citizen over the next three weeks in the world's second largest census.
Kickstarting the second phase of Census 2011, a woman enumerator went to Rashtrapati Bhavan and collected information for a questionnaire from the country's first citizen.
The decadal exercise, which will cover the entire country, began by collecting information on a "number of characteristics about the President's personal household" by enumerator Rita, a Rashtrapati Bhavan spokesperson said. India has an estimated 1.17 billion population.
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Headcount of billion-plus Indians begins
Speaking after her enumeration, the President asked everyone to wholeheartedly take part in the Census operation, which is gigantic in scale and to take it as a national duty.
A team of Census officials led by Registrar-General and Census Commissioner C Chandramouli also enumerated Vice-President Hamid Ansari as part of the country-wide exercise.
Headcount of billion-plus Indians begins
"It is the second largest census in the world and I wish the Registrar-General and his team a grand success," he said. World's largest census is carried out in China.
Ansari said this Census will determine the socio-economic health of the country in next decade.
Headcount of billion-plus Indians begins
The first phase called House listing and Housing Census, was conducted between April to September last year.
The second phase, called the Population Enumeration phase, starting today is being conducted simultaneously all over the country till February 28 and the entire exercise would be completed by March 5.
All 640 districts, 5,767 tehsils, 7,742 towns and more than six lakh villages of the country will be covered in the exercise. This is 15th Census of the country.
Click on MORE to read what Census is and how it is done...
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