Bhubaneswar: Preparations for the largest administrative exercise in the world, Census of India-2021, have started in the state.
A high-level meeting was held under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi at the Secretariat here Friday.
The census would be carried out in two phases. In the first phase, there would be house listing and housing census and in the second, population enumeration would be done. It was decided to complete both the phases tentatively by March, 2021. A specially designed mobile app will be developed for enumeration to make it more accurate and real this time.
Unlike previous censuses, this time tehsil-wise enumeration would be done instead of police station-wise enumeration. Tehsildars have been instructed to update and certify the maps of the villages in their respective tehsils.
The district magistrates would function as principal census officers and the additional district magistrates (ADMs) would be designated as district census officers in their respective districts.
Looking into different dimensions of the proposed exercise, the Chief Secretary directed officials concerned to make the whole operation complete and accurate.
The government has also decided to pre-test the census techniques in three places — Pattamundai in Kendrapara district, Puintala in Bolangir district and Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) in Khurda district.
Joint Director Census, Government of India, Pravakar Barad, said that the pre-testing would be done through a mobile app. It would start from August 12, 2019 and would be completed by September 30, 2019 within which the whole census operation would be done on sampling basis using both the mobile app and paper mode.
