अन्य

Update NPR to enumerate self during next Census

If citizens want to exercise the right to fill the Census form on their own rather than through government enumerators, they will have to first update their details online. The NPR, first put together in 2010 and updated in 2015, already has the details of 119 crore people.

Census 2021, which has been postponed indefinitely, will be the first digital Census giving citizens an opportunity to “self-enumerate” as and when it is conducted. The government has not announced when the next Census will be held, with ruling out the exercise at least till September.

The Census is conducted in two phases. The first phase — the Houselisting Operations (HLO) and Housing Census — is to be conducted with simultaneous updating of NPR. Population enumeration is the second and the main phase, which collects details on key social and economic parameters.

According to a collection of reports released by Home Minister Amit Shah on May 21 at the inauguration of a new Census building in Delhi, “self-enumeration for Census will be provided to only those households that have updated the NPR online”.

“During self-enumeration in NPR, Aadhaar / mobile number is mandatorily collected,” the report which contains the details of Census exercises held since 1981 said.

According to the Citizenship Rules 2003, the NPR is the first step towards compilation of the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC/NRC).

The Office of the Registrar of General of India (ORGI), which conducts the Census, has developed a “self-enumeration (SE)” portal which is presently available in English only.

The yet-to-be-launched mobile-friendly portal will allow users to register the mobile number in the NPR database, self-enumerate and fill the details under Houselisting Operations.

The report said that Census is a process of acquiring the data of each and every member of the given population and recording it in the database.

“The advent of technology has given the ORGI an opportunity to give the power in the hands of the public by making them a part of Census operations so that they themselves can enumerate in Census. Keeping this in view, ORGI has developed a web-based portal called SE portal... allows the respondents to view and update the information of their households members,” the report said.

Respondents can update the details of their family members online without the help of an enumerator for “privacy” and to reduce financial and administrative burden incurred in collection of field data.

The portal accessible to “respondents of India” will offer “ secure and controlled access to the respondent’s family information and authentication based on pre-filled information available with ORGI and One Time Password (OTP) sent to registered mobile number,” the report said.

The respondent will be allowed to change the family member details, and add details of new family members. Those who are no longer part of the household shall be marked as “moved-out or died”.

Initially, it had been decided that during the HLO, the mobile number from the households willing to share them would be collected, and then, used for giving people access for self-enumeration during the second phase — the population enumeration. “Later, when the Census and NPR exercise was postponed due to COVID-19, it was decided to extend the self-enumeration facility for HLO also,” the report said.

The NPR pre-test form in 2019 collected details on 14 parameters of all family members of a household. The sub-heads included passport number, relationship to head of the family, whether divorced/widowed or separated, the mother tongue and the kind of occupation, among others. The trial form had a column on Aadhar, mobile phone number, Voter ID and driving licence numbers to be provided if available with the respondent. The final form is yet to be published.

The government earlier said that the objective of the NPR is to create a comprehensive identity database of every usual resident in the country and it is “mandatory for every usual resident of India to register in the NPR.” While similar data is collected through the Census, according to Section 15 of the Census Act, 1948, individual data are confidential and “only aggregated data are released at various administrative levels.” The Home Ministry had earlier said that data collected under the NPR are shared with States and used by the Central government for various welfare schemes at the individual level.