UPSC Articles
Census and NPR exercise postponed
Part of: GS Prelims and GS-II- Polity and Governance
In News:
- The Union government may postpone the house-listing Census and updating of the National Population Register (NPR) owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Both exercises were scheduled to kick off in certain States on April 1.
Do you know?
- President Ram Nath Kovind was supposed to be the first Indian to be enumerated in the Census and NPR exercise. (as President is the first citizen of India)
- Difference between NPR and NRC? And NPR and Census?
Important value additions:
About NPR
- It is a register of usual residents of the country being prepared at all levels – local, district, state and national.
- A usual resident is defined, for the purposes of the NPR, as a person who has resided in a local area for the past six months or more, or a person who intends to reside in that area for the next six months.
- It is conducted under provisions of the Citizenship Act 1955 and the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003.
- The NPR exercise was to be carried out between April and September 2020 in all states and UTs, except Assam.
- The objective of the NPR is to create a comprehensive identity database of every usual resident in the country. The database would contain demographic as well as biometric particulars.
About Census
- The decennial census is the largest single source of a variety of statistical information on different characteristics of the people of India.
- It is conducted on the basis of the Census Act enacted in 1948.
- The census, 2021 will be done in two phases.
- In the first phase, census will be conducted from April to September, 2020.
- In the second phase, it will be done from February 9 to February 28, 2021.
