Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday said that the Census 2021 data will be collected through a mobile app. Amit Shah said at a programme in Delhi where he laid foundation of Janganana Bhawan.
Shah said, “A mobile app will be used in Census 2021. It will be a transformation from paper census to digital census.” He also said that Rs 12,000 crore will be spent on the first digital census.
He further said, “National Population Register is being prepared for the first time in 2021 census.”
He also proposed the idea of multipurpose identity card for citizens with all utilities like Aadhaar, passport, driving licence and bank accounts.
The last census was carried out in 2011 with a population count of 121 crore.
Earlier, in April the officials of the Registrar General of India at a conference said enumerators would be encouraged to use their own mobile phone for which they would be paid appropriate remuneration or else they would have the option to collect and record the data through paper schedules, to be eventually submitted by them electronically.
Describing the Census 2021 as the world’s largest such exercise, Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba had earlier said that 33 lakh enumerators would be mobilised for data collection for which a notification has already been issued.
The reference date for the next census 1 October for Jammu and Kashmir and snow-bound areas of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand and March 1 2021 for the rest of the country, according to the government notification.