Census exercise delayed yet again

Census exercise delayed yet again

News: The Census enumeration scheduled to take place in 2021 has been further pushed to 2024-25 until further orders. 
• In a letter sent to all states and Union Territories last month, the office of the Registrar General of India (RGI) has extended the deadline of freezing of administrative boundaries to June 30, 2023. 

What is the Census?
• Population Census is the total process of collecting, compiling, analyzing and disseminating demographic, economic and social data pertaining, at a specific time, of all persons in a country or a well-defined part of a country.
• Census is the basis for reviewing the country's progress in the past decade, monitoring the ongoing schemes of the government and plan for the future
• The exercise is undertaken every 10 years in India. 
• The decennial Census is conducted by the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, Ministry of Home Affairs.
• Census is conducted under the provisions of the Census Act, 1948. The population census is a Union subject under Article 246 of India Constitution
• The Census Act, 1948 also guarantees confidentiality of the information collected during population census. 

What are the possible implications of delay?
• Delimitation of parliamentary and Assembly constituencies would continue to be based on 2001 Census till data from a Census after 2026 are published.
• Census are used to determine the number of seats to be reserved for SCs and STs in Parliament, State legislatures, local bodies, and government services. Therefore, delay in the Census means that the data from the 2011 Census would continue to be used. Villages and towns have seen rapid changes in the composition of their population over the last decade, this would mean that either too many or too few seats are being reserved. 
• The delay will impact government schemes and programmes, and would result in unreliable estimates from other surveys on consumption, health and employment, which depend on census data to determine policy and welfare measures. 

How will 2021 census be different from previous ones?
• For the first time the data is collected digitally via mobile applications (installed on enumerator’s phone) with a provision of working in offline mode.
• The Census Monitoring & Management Portal will act as a single source for all officers/officials involved in Census activities to provide multi-language support.
• First time that information of a person from the Transgender Community and members living in the family will be collected. Earlier there was a column for male and female only.