Government likely to postpone census to 2022

The vaccinations for the corona virus is under process across the country and the officials have stated the census as a ‘non-essential exercise’. The Covid-19 cases in India are still in huge numbers and the census is expected to be held in the starting of 2022.

“Our hands are full dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic,” said an official pointing towards the mass program of vaccination.

The first phase of the census — House Listing & Housing Census — and the updating of the National Population Register (NPR) were initially to be rolled out in some States on April 1, 2020 but were postponed due to pandemic.

The exercise was to have been conducted in two phases — House Listing and Housing Census from April to September 2020 and Population Enumeration from February 9 to February 28, 2021.

The entire process has become a little controversial since the Parliament approved the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in December 2019 that sought to give citizenship to persecuted minorities from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan who entered India on or before December 31, 2014. However, the rules required for implementing CAA haven’t been framed yet.