A pre-test of Census 2021 will be carried out across the country from August 12 to September 30, officials said on Friday.
The reference date for the census is October 1, 2020 for Jammu and Kashmir and snow-bound areas of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, while for the rest of country it is March 1, 2021.
Collection of data with mobile phones is likely to shorten the process of results being available and in all probability, major part of data is likely to be available by 2023-2024, an official said.
The complete data of the 2011 census could be available only after several years.
The pre-test of census 2021 will be from August 12 to September 30, the official said.
The questions for house listing and population census remain the same, except that facilities like internet usage or facility, digital banking etc are mapped this time.
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More focus is being given on training unlike last time when NGOs were used to train the enumerators.
For the first time in the 140-year history of the census in India, data is proposed to be collected through a mobile app and enumerators would be encouraged to use their own phone. App is being developed indigenously for collecting the data and in Android phones.
The census data will be digitised this time.
The census 2021 will be the world's largest enumeration exercise, another official said.
A total of 33 lakh enumerators, the persons who conduct door-to-door counting, would be mobilised for data collection for which notification has already been issued.
Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba had said the census is not only an exercise of head count, but also provides invaluable socio-economic data which forms credible basis for informed policy formulation and allocation of resources.
The changing demography and socio-economic parameters reflected by the census help in reformulation of the country's plans for the economic development and welfare schemes for its people, he had said.
The Census 2021 will be conducted in two phases. In the first phase, house listing operations would be conducted in any two months chosen by the states between April and September in 2020.
In the second phase, actual population enumeration would be done during February 9 to 28, 2021, followed by the revision round from March 1 to 5, 2021.
In Jammu and Kashmir and snow-bound areas of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, population enumeration would be conducted during September 11 to 30, 2020, followed by the revision round from October 1 to 5, 2020.