Census-2011 begins in Delhi

NEW DELHI - With the enumeration of Lt. Governor Tejendra Khanna, Census-2011 kicked off in the national capital Saturday.

With this, the operation for preparing the first National Population Register also began in Delhi.

Appealing to the residents of Delhi to participate in the census, Khanna said: “The activity will help each individual as it will be a comprehensive identity database that would help in better targeting of the benefits and services under government schemes, improve planning and help strengthen security.”

Census-2011, the world’s biggest administrative exercise, began April 1 when President Pratibha Patil was enumerated as the first citizen of India.

The gigantic exercise - the 15th headcount of India’s population since 1872 - is being undertaken in two phases to create a database on demography, economic activity, literacy and education, housing and household amenities, urbanisation, fertility and mortality, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, language, religion and migration.

The exercise is being conducted in two phases — house-listing and population count. Over the next one year, about 2.5 million census officials would visit households in more than 7,000 towns and 600,000 villages in the country.

They have begun the process of house-listing, which records information on homes. The headcount of people will take place Feb 9-28, 2011. The full census results will be released in mid-2011.