Updating Census Registers

• 24 Dec 2020

Why in News

Recently, the Registrar General of India (RGI) has written to all State coordinators to update the census register.

• A census is the procedure of systematically enumerating, and acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population.

Key Points

• The Order: RGI has written to all State coordinators to update names of an area, locality, colony or a building in the “charge register”.
• Charge register: The charge register shows the distribution of work among enumerators and marks the House Listing Blocks (HLB) to be visited by each official.
  
  • HLB is a primary unit of collection of data.
  • Use of Charge Register:
    
    • It is an important census document that will help enumerators to collect details during the first phase of census house listing and housing census and National Population Register (NPR).
    • The register will also be used for the field work relating to the updating of NPR since the same functionaries will be engaged.
• Implication:
  
  • The census exercise was suspended indefinitely owing to the Covid-19 pandemic. The communication from RGI may be an indication that the census exercise may take off in the near future.

Registrar General of India

• The Census Organisation was set up on an ad-hoc basis for each Census till the 1951 Census.
• The Government of India, in 1949 established an organisation in the Ministry of Home Affairs under Registrar General and ex-Officio Census Commissioner, India to develop systematic collection of statistics on the size of population, its growth, etc.
• Later, this office was also entrusted with the responsibility of implementation of Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969 in the country.
• It arranges, conducts and analyses the results of the demographic surveys of India including Census of India and Linguistic Survey of India.
  
  • Census of India: It provides information on size, distribution and socio-economic, demographic and other characteristics of the country’s population.
    
    • The decennial Census of India has been conducted 15 times, as of 2011.
    • While it has been undertaken every 10 years, beginning in 1872 under British Viceroy Lord Mayo, the first complete census was taken in 1881.
    • Post-1949, it has been conducted by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India under the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
  • Linguistic Survey of India: The primary objective of the present Linguistic Survey of India is to present an updated linguistic scenario.
    
    • It is conducted along with the decennial Census exercise.
    • It also provides necessary inputs to the social/educational planners in respective States for their planning to attain the envisaged goals.
    • First linguistic survey of India was published by George Abraham Grierson in 1928.
• The position of Registrar is usually held by a civil servant holding the rank of Joint Secretary.

National Population Register (NPR)

• NPR is a register of the usual residents of the country. It is prepared at the local (village and sub-town), sub-district, district, state and national levels under provisions of the Citizenship Act, 1955 and the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003.
• It is mandatory for every “usual resident of India” to register in the NPR.
• The data for the NPR was first collected in 2010 along with the house listing phase of Census 2011.
• In 2015, this data was further updated by conducting a door-to-door survey.

Source: TH