NEW DELHI: The Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, Mritunjay Kumar Narayan, on Monday asked people to provide accurate information to census enumerators, asserting that individual data will remain confidential and cannot be used as evidence or to obtain any benefit under any scheme.
Addressing a press conference, as the first phase of the country’s 16th Census is all set to begin in April in some states, including Delhi, the commissioner said that under Section 15 of the Census Act, all individual data remains confidential.
“All individual data collected during the exercise remains confidential. It cannot be shared with any organisation, be it government or private, under the Right to Information Act, or used as evidence in a court,” Narayan said.
Only statistical aggregate data will be used for tabulation purposes, he added.
Asked about caste being included in the Census and the apprehension that people may not furnish correct information, Narayan said the data related to caste will be collected during the second phase, and the questions will be decided after exhaustive discussions.
“There are many suggestions on how to collect caste information. All those will be considered, and the best will be put forth before finalising questions,” he said.
“Individual information cannot be used for any purpose. Only aggregate statistical information is made public. Individual data cannot be used to derive any benefit from any scheme. There is no such provision. Hence, the manipulation you are apprehending is not possible,” Narayan said.
The last comprehensive caste-based count was done between 1881 and 1931. Caste was excluded from all census operations conducted since Independence.
The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, decided to include caste enumeration in the upcoming census on April 30 last year.
Narayan said that strict measures are in place for digital security, in conformity with the norms set by the Indian agencies.
The commissioner also made it clear that no documents shall be collected during the exercise.
“There is no scope for any manipulation. People have the option of self-enumeration; an enumerator will go from house to house to collect information, even after self-enumeration is completed, to verify it. There is also a supervisor for every six enumerators, making it a double-layered process to rule out any manipulation,” he said.
For the first time, self-enumeration has been introduced in the Census process, allowing people to digitally submit information during the 15-day window preceding the first phase of the Census Housing listing and Housing Census, as notified by each state and UT, Narayan said.
The Housing Listing Operations (HLO) will take place during a 30-day window specified by each state and Union territory between April 1 and September 30 this year.
There will also be an option for self-enumeration to be conducted in a 15-day window immediately before the start of Housing Listing Operations.
In Delhi, the HLO phase will be conducted in two 30-day windows. The New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) and Delhi Cantonment areas will undergo the exercise from April 16 to May 15, and the MCD area from May 16 to June 15.
The self-enumeration for the NDMC and Delhi Cantonment areas shall begin on April 1, and for the MCD, from May 1 to May 15.
Ten states and UTs have issued notifications to start the first phase of the exercise in April, 15 will start in May, and 10 will start in June or later.
“Once data is matched and authenticated, the process shall be considered complete,” the commissioner said.
The individual doing self-enumeration will have the chance of correcting any incorrect data during the visit of the enumerator, he added.
“Earlier, data was collected on physical paper, which took a lot of time in digitisation. We will start collecting digital data from the outset, so we will be able to issue it very early. Many data sets will be published in 2027,” Narayan said.
The commissioner said this provision will be available only to people residing in the country, not to those outside its geographical boundaries.
Narayan also said data will be collected through the mobile application on enumerators’ phones; a web-based portal will monitor and manage various activities of the Census and House Listing; and block creation will be done through a web mapping application.
Highlighting digital security to safeguard data, Narayan said, among other protocols in place, data centres have been declared critical information infrastructure to ensure data security during the Census.
He also said that no decision regarding the updation of the National Population Register has been taken as of now, and there is no correlation with the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls being undertaken by the Election Commission of India.
“SECC is not our issue. There is no provision for inquiring into the data under the Census. It is an administratively massive exercise in which there is no provision to inquire into the data provided by any individual. That’s why individual data is kept confidential and cannot be used to obtain benefits from any government scheme.
“This provision is intended to ensure that people come forward and provide accurate information to the enumerators. These are important data, which are used to form the country’s policy, hence there is no provision of inquiry, and it is not possible to conduct any inquiry,” he said.
Narayan said the first phase of the census will include questions on housing conditions, and no personal details, including caste or religion, will be collected in this phase.
During the first phase, the officials will also collect information about the name and sex of the head of the household, ownership status of the house being surveyed, number of dwelling rooms exclusively in possession of the house, and number of married couples living in the house, among other questions, a gazette notification had said.
“The reference date for the said census shall be 00.00 hours of the first day of March 2027, except for the Union territory of Ladakh and the snow-bound non-synchronous areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand,” Narayan said
“In the Population Enumeration phase, data related to various demographic, socio-cultural and economic parameters along with migration and fertility characteristics of individuals from each household will be collected,” he said.
Narayan said that questions for the first phase were notified on January 22, and that notifications for the period and questions for the second phase will be published in due course.
The eighth version of the exercise to collect population-related data across the country will be carried out by about 30 lakh enumerators and supervisors, and around 1.3 lakh census functionaries, armed with digital devices.
The decadal exercise, scheduled for 2021, was postponed due to the Covid-19 outbreak.
The Registrar General of India has notified 33 questions that will be put to citizens during the first phase of the census – Household Listing and Housing Census.
The Housing Listing and Housing Census systematically list all structures, houses, and households throughout the country to prepare a sound framework for the conduct of the population enumeration.
