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At least 110 municipal towns in 48 districts of Uttar Pradesh have become free of slums in the last one decade,going by the data collected in Census 2011. Surprised,the Director of Census Operations (DCO) in UP Neena Sharma has asked the state government to get the information verified from municipal officers.
At the time of 2001 Census,as many as 12.74 lakh people in 1.81 lakh households were living in the slums in these towns. Sharma has sent to the government the list of the districts and municipal towns,complete with the number of slum household which existed there according to the 2001 census.
During Census 2011,executive officers in municipal towns were directed to identify slums,demarcate enumeration blocks there and count the people living there. The verified data sent by executive officers to the DCO shows that number of slums in these 110 municipal towns was zero now.
In response to the communique from the DCO,the Urban Development Principal Secretary of UP government Pravir Kumar has directed the district magistrates of all these 48 districts to reconfirm the information from executive officers and other related officials of municipal bodies. Sources said that municipal officers in these towns might have to send teams in fields once again to check the actual position.
Sources said that the release of the final data of slums in the state was getting delayed because of this recheck. At the national level,the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India can release the final data of slum population in the country only when it collects final and confirmed information from states.
In view of the importance and urgency of the matter,the officers in the government recently checked the progress in the task from district magistrates through video-conferencing.
Before releasing the data of a new census,it is checked with the previous census data. In this process,it was found that slums existed in these 110 municipal towns in 2001,but the number of slums there was reported zero in the 2011 Census, said Sharma,adding that The data of slums as per the 2011 census is yet to be sent to RGI as validity check of the data is being done.
The data of slums and population living there is important for the Government of India for drafting development and welfare schemes for slums.
Among the towns with the maximum slum households in 2001 were Jhansi (24,933),Muzaffarnagar (11,222),Mainpuri (9,841),Mirzapur-cum-Vindhyachal (7,359),Bijnor (7,021),Jahangirabad (6,229),Modinagar (5,378),Amroha (5,088),Fatehpur (4,128) and Sultanpur (3,579).
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