Covid, LS polls set to delay 2021 Census by at least 3 years

In a letter to all states and Union Territories in December 2022, the office of the Registrar General of India (RGI) extended to June 30, 2023 the deadline to freeze administrative boundaries, the first step before the exercise gets underway.

The Census enumeration can begin only a few months after administrative boundaries are frozen, but with the General Election scheduled early next year, the possibility of this exercise taking place this year stands ruled out. Besides, Census work will be preceded by the house-listing enumeration.

Earlier, the deadline for jurisdictional changes was December 31, 2022.

In March 2022, the government had notified certain amendments to Census Rules to allow citizens to self-enumerate themselves in the Census and the National Population Register (NPR). The development had led to speculation that the house-listing phase of the Census exercise could begin in 2022 itself.

In the letter to the states and UTs, the RGI had cited the Covid-19 pandemic as the reason for extending the deadline. The same reason has been given for multiple such deadline extensions since 2020.

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

The deadline for update of jurisdictional changes was first extended until December 31, 2020; then to March 31, 2021; after that to June 30, 2021, further to December 31, 2021, subsequently to June 30, 2022 and finally to December 31, 2022.

While both NPR and NRC created much controversy in the wake of the Citizenship Amendment Act, with many states opposing them, the deadline for Census enumeration was indefinitely postponed in early 2020 due to the outbreak of Covid-19 in the country.

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

Requirements before Census exercise

Before every Census, every state is required to provide information to the Registrar General of India (RGI) on changes in the number of notified districts, villages, towns and other administrative units such as tehsils, talukas and police stations since the previous Census. Boundaries of administrative units are frozen three months before the Census exercise begins. In this period, the data is compiled and shared with RGI for preparatory work on the Census.

– With PTI inputs