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'Population growth expected to decline in Census 2011'

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Press Trust of India Chandigarh

The growth of India's population was likely to come down by over 5% in Census 2011, Registrar General and Census Commissioner C Chandramouli today said.

"In the upcoming Census 2011 (2001-2011), the growth of population is expected to come down to 16% from 21.5% growth witnessed in Census 2001 (1991-2001)," Chandramouli told reporters here.

Notably, the growth of country's population had remained 25% in Census 1971 and 1981, 24% in 1991 and 21.5% in 2001. It has grown from 439 million in Census 1961 to 1,028 million in Census 2001. In the Census 2011, the population is expected to be around the 1.2 billion mark.

 

He pointed out that the younger population was also expected to grow at a handsome rate. "Population above 18 years will grow at 28.8% in Census 2011.... So this way we are going to have younger population in the Census," he said.

In a massive exercise, the Census 2011 would embark across the country from February 9 till February 28 to enumerate country's burgeoning population of 1.2 billion, covering 6.40 lakh villages across 35 states and UTs.

Noting that leaving out any segment of population in Census was a "matter of concern", he asserted that efforts in the upcoming Census 2011 would be to keep the omission rate less than 2%.

"In post enumeration exercise, we generally see that 1 or 2% population is left out in Census...Though (omission) rate 2% is not that much....But when you translate this percentage of total population into numbers keeping in view of over a billion population, then this figure is too high," he said, adding, "We will try to bring down the percentage to less than 2%."

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First Published: Feb 04 2011 | 8:09 PM IST

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