CENSUS TO BECOME FULLY DIGITISED BY 2024: SHAH

GUWAHATI: The next census held in the country will be carried out through a digital platform which will be ready by 2024, said Union home minister Amit Shah on Monday.

Shah, who is on a two-day visit to Assam, said that the 2021 census process, which was stopped due to Covid-19 , will be an e-census (electronic census).

“Though Covid-19 has slowed us down, I am confident that by 2024, we will complete modernisation of the Registrar General of India’s (RGI) work and develop a software which will address several tasks under one platform,” Shah said while inaugurating the state census office in Amingaon, on the outskirts of Guwahati.

“We have taken the historic step to shift the census process from paper to an electronic format. People can easily fill up all their family details using the software,” he added.

Shah said the new software will have multi-dimensional uses as it will be linked with registration of births and deaths. As soon as someone is born, their details will get updated in the software, Shah said.

Once that person turns 18, their names will get registered in the voters’ list from the census office itself. The names will get deleted from voters’ list, from the census office, once that person dies. Shah said details like people shifting residences will also be updated via the software.

“Lot of tasks will get addressed through the

software like registration of births, inclusion of names in voters’ lists, registration of deaths. There will be an automatic addition and deletion of such details. There needs to be lot of awareness about this,” he said.