Census to be delayed again, deadline for freezing of boundaries extended to June 30

Earlier, the deadline for jurisdictional changes was December 31, 2022, and before that, June 30, 2022.

In March last year, the government had notified certain amendments to Census Rules to allow citizens to self-enumerate themselves in the Census and National Population Register (NPR). The development had led to speculation that the house-listing phase of the Census may begin last year itself.

In the letter, the RGI has cited Covid-19 as a reason for extending the deadline. The same reason has been given for multiple such deadlines since 2020.

“Owing to the prevailing conditions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, danger of increased probability of its spread and the preoccupation/ involvement of the States/UTs in speeding up the vaccination drive against COVID-19 in the country, it would not be possible to start the work of ensuing Census this year. Also, the time period for conducting the ensuing census is not yet decided,” the letter for the last deadline extension had said.

As per Rule 8(iv) of Census Rules, 1990, the boundaries of the administrative units shall be frozen from the date intimated by the Census Commissioner, which shall not be earlier than one year from the Census reference date.

“As such, it has now been decided by the competent authority to further extend the date of freezing of boundaries up to 31st December, 2022. The boundaries of the administrative units for the ensuing Census will now be frozen on 31 December, 2022,” the letter had said.

Before every Census, states are required to provide information to the RGI on changes in the number of notified districts, villages, towns and other administrative units such as tehsils, talukas and police stations in a state since the last Census. The boundaries of administrative units are frozen three months before the commencement of Census. In this period, the data is compiled and shared with RGI which begins its preparatory work for the Census.

For the 2021 Census, the RGI had first issued a jurisdictional change updation notice on December 22, 2017. It had then asked the states to update the changes by January 31, 2020, with December 31, 2019, being fixed as the deadline for freezing of boundaries for the purpose of the Census. The house-listing phase of the Census had then been scheduled to start from April 1, 2020, to September 30, 2020. It was during this period that RGI was also supposed to conduct the enumeration for NPR, a precursor to the preparation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

While both NPR and NRC have created much controversy in the wake of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), with many states openly opposing them, the deadline for Census enumeration was indefinitely postponed in early 2020 due to the outbreak of Covid 19 in the country. Notably, the deadline for the updation of jurisdictional changes has also been extended multiple times.

The deadline was extended to December 31, 2020, March 31, 2021, June 30, 2021, December 31, 2021, June 30, 2022, and finally, to December 31, 2022.

According to provisional data available with the RGI, the number of districts in the country has gone up from 640 in 2011 to 736 currently.