Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday said that digitisation of census will translate to many benefits for the people of the country and National Population Register (NPR) would help the government solve many issues.
“We are going to start the National Population Register (NPR) for the first time in the 2021 census. NPR will prove to be a game-changer in the country. Digital census has many benefits. If a child takes birth and does not die up to the age of 18, shouldn’t he/she be able to vote automatically without applying for a voter id card,” Shah said.
“I will give an example of the Ujjwala Yojana under which we have been able to distribute gas cylinders to 95 per cent of the population based on the digital analysis of the 2011 census. We implemented 22 schemes on the basis of the census,” he added.
Shah said that in 2021, a mobile app would be included and the census would be transformed from paper form to digital form.
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He further said that the census of India lays the foundation for future planning of resources for the people of the country.
“Census in our country is not a new activity. It has been happening for a long time. The census was started in 1865 by the Britishers when they were ruling the country. For the first time questionnaire was included in the census in 1931. From 1901, castes were included in the census. In 1961, mother tongue was included in the census,” he said.
“When the 2011 census came, we came to know that people speak 217 languages and dialects in the country. In 2001, automatic form processing technology was used in the census,” he added.
The Union Home Minister said that India has an area of 2.4 per cent of the total area of the world and in terms of population, the country has 17.5 per cent of the world population and that is an indicator of how hard the country has to work to meet its development goals.
“In 2011, our literacy rate grew to 74 per cent and the 2011 census also informed us that the highest number of youth is residing in our country,” he said.
Shah said that 16 languages have been kept in the census so that people are able to give responses in their own language. The government is going to spend Rs 12,000 crore on this census.
Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai, Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla and Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India Dr Vivek Joshi were also present at the foundation ceremony of the new Janganana Bhawan.