Needed for Population Register:Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Maken handing over the slip, which was filled by the Census enumerators, to a resident in New Delhi on Tuesday.
NEW DELHI: Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Maken has urged citizens to retain the slips they are given after filling up Census forms as these would be needed during the upcoming National Population Register exercise.
Mr. Maken was taking stock of the ongoing enumeration exercise at R. K. Puram here on Tuesday accompanied by local MLA Barkha Singh.
Mr. Maken urged Census officials and enumerators to apprise citizens of the importance of the slips during the NPR exercise which involves taking bio-metric identification by means of fingerprint impression, iris impression and photograph of individuals.
It was earlier reported that many people had failed to retain the slips as officials had not told them of its importance besides the procedural delays that would be caused by its loss.
About the creation of NPR in coastal areas, Mr. Maken said data collection was over in seven States and four Union Territories. In the remaining two States of Maharashtra and West Bengal, it would be completed this month, he said. “The biographical details of about 1.16 crore people and biometric details of more than 61 lakh people have been collected so far,” he said.
Ruing the fact that many landlords were not permitting their tenants to get listed in the Census exercise, Mr. Maken affirmed that the information given during the Census would be kept strictly confidential. Accurate information and data were vital to the success of the entire Census exercise, he said.
The Minister also detailed the current status and progress of the NPR, house listing and housing census being carried out in the States and UTs.
Data collection had been completed in Assam, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Meghalaya, Goa, Delhi (partly), Himachal Pradesh (synchronous areas), Sikkim, Lakshadweep, Orissa, Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Dadar & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu, he said.
“It is almost completed in Andhra and Tripura and in the case of West Bengal, for a few areas of the State, the date has been extended up to June 30 though it is mostly complete,” Mr. Maken said.
He added that substantial progress had been made in Delhi, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Haryana, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Rajasthan, Jammu & Kashmir (synchronous areas), Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, while the Census exercises started successfully in Himachal Pradesh (non-synchronous areas), Tamil Nadu, Nagaland, Puducherry and Manipur on June 1.