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.
