Census and NPR exercise postponed

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.