Mobile app to count Indians in next Census

New Delhi: Census 2021 would be conducted entirely digitally through a mobile app instead of the conventional pen and paper method. While announcing this on Monday, Union home minister Amit Shah also said that India could have a “single multi-purpose identity card” which will be used as an identity card, voter card, passport and also as a PAN.

Mr Shah said that the reference date for the census will be March 1, 2021, while for the snow-infested states of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, it will be October 1, 2020. The entire exercise to be conducted in 16 languages will cost a whopping `12,000 crores. Speaking during the laying of the foundation stone of a new building of the Registrar-General of India and Census Commissioner in New Delhi, the minister also pitched for a single multi-purpose identity card for all public utilities like Aadhaar, passport, driving licence and bank accounts.

This is the first time that census data will be collected through a mobile app. Mr Shah said the census data will help in better planning and execution of public welfare schemes and development initiatives.

“The public needs to be informed about the benefits of the census exercise as the data contributes significantly in the country’s progress. The data collected is mutli-dimensional, with several benefits,” the minister said. It can also be used for the delimitation exercise for Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies, along with the municipal wards. He that earlier governments did no comprehensive planning for development work, but this approach changed completely after Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014. He said the Modi government, on basis of the 2011 Census, planned 22 welfare schemes. Most of these were related to providing every house electricity, gas connections, construction of roads, through trucks after its procurement from the Jhelum river, are going on.

“You can go to apple orchards and you can see heaps of apples that have been plucked and packed into boxes and being transported out of Valley...  hundreds of trucks have come out. Who is plucking these apples? Who is packing them in boxes, who is loading them into these trucks? And who takes the trucks out from the Valley?” he asked.

He said that flights are operating in and out of Srinagar, and shops, which have downed their shutters because of threats from terrorists, are operating from the backdoor.

Flights were being operated in and out of Srinagar and other modes of transport like taxis were functional, he said and wanted to know if these could happen in a clampdown scenario.

Asked about India’s response to the reactivation of the Balakot camp, and if another surgical strike may be expected, he said, “Why must you expect repeat of a similar thing? Earlier we did something, then we did Balakot, why must we repeat...? Why not keep the other side guessing as to what we will do; why tell him what we are going to do? …Why say repeat, why not something beyond that.”

The Chief of the Army Staff also asserted that the wrong interpretation of Islam by some elements who wanted to create disruption, is spreading. “I feel the interpretation of Islam by some elements who possibly want to create disruption is being fed to large number of people. It is not that the religion is bad but the manner in which it is being interpreted for whatever reason is what is affecting the people who listen to those messages. I think it is important that we have preachers who convey the correct meaning of Islam in whatever form it was written by those who wanted Islam to be preached in proper manner,” he said.

On February 27 this year, IAF fighters flew into Pakistan to bomb a Jaish-e-Mohammed terror facility at Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The action came after the February 14 suicide bombing in Pulwama, which killed over 40 CRPF personnel.