Government plans to use Aadhaar data for population census
PTK News Monitoring Desk
SRINAGAR : The government is planning to use the Aadhaar data in a big way for the coming population-census exercise, in addition to deploying physical workforce for enumeration at each and every household, a report quoting official sources reveals.
“Aadhaar data will ensure that double counting doesn’t take place. At times one person is counted twice in two different households, which leads to over-counting, that won’t happen (with the use of Aadhaar),” a source has said to a section of media.
Besides the total number of people living in the Indian territory, the government also collects data of the date of birth, marital status, age, gender, income and occupation etc. from households, in the population census exercise. “All the data of all the households can’t be fetched through Aadhar, therefore, physical presence of authorities would be required as first resort ,” reveals the report.
Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar had informed Parliament in April 2023 that the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India has “no plans” to use Aadhaar data for census exercise.
in June 2023, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued a gazette notification allowing the office of Registrar General and Census Commissioner to perform Aadhaar authentication for the registration of births and deaths.
Notably, the population-census exercise, which was scheduled to take place in 2021, was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. a report reveals that the government has not yet kick-started the census process, but has done “some background” work.
So far, one phase of the exercise is partly complete. The second-phase will involve counting the number of individuals in households. It is likely to take around 12 months for the second phase to conclude, and the process is seen beginning post general elections, reveals a report.
A meeting of the Union Cabinet in December 2019 had approved the proposal for conducting census of India 2021 at a cost of Rs 8,700 crore and updating the National Population Register (NPR) at a cost of Rs 3,900 crore.
The interim budget 2023-24 has allocated Rs 1,277.80 crore for census, significantly lower from 2021-22 when Rs 3,768 crore was allocated.
