New Delhi, Apr 30 (PTI) The government is likely to carry out the census "soon" following Wednesday's announcement of a caste enumeration along with the decadal exercise as a decision on whether to conduct the caste census or not was delaying the entire operation after the Covid pandemic was over, a senior government functionary said Wednesday.

With the government deciding to conduct caste enumeration along with the decadal census, the focus is now on when the exercise will be carried out as it has been already delayed by five years.

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The census will be carried out "soon" as a decision over whether to carry out or not the caste census was delaying the whole process, the senior functionary privy to the development said.

The census will be carried out under the direct supervision of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner of India, an officer who reports to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).

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The MHA is tightlipped when the massive enumeration exercise will be carried out.

The house listing phase of the census and the exercise to update the National Population Register (NPR) were scheduled to be carried out across the country from April 1 to September 30, 2020 but were postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The census operation continues to be on hold and the government has not yet announced the new schedule.

In August 2024, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had said the census will be carried out at an appropriate time and it will be announced when it is decided.

A meeting of the Union cabinet on December 24, 2019 had approved the proposal for conducting census of India 2021 at a cost of Rs 8,754.23 crore and updating the NPR at a cost of Rs 3,941.35 crore.

However, the Budget 2025-26, allocated just Rs 574.80 crore for the census, giving an indication that it may not be carried out this year, even after a significant delay.

However, the government functionary said, it (budget) was a minor issue and can be sorted out without any impediment.

According to the Budget 2025-26, an amount of Rs 574.80 crore has been allocated for census surveys and statistics/ the Registrar General of India (RGI) and it was Rs 572 crore in 2024-25.

The entire census and NPR exercise is likely to cost the government over Rs 13,000 crore.

This exercise, whenever it will happen, will be the first digital census giving the citizens an opportunity to self-enumerate.

The NPR has been made compulsory for citizens who want to exercise the right to fill the census form on their own rather than through government enumerators. For this, the census authority has designed a self-enumeration portal which is yet to be launched.

During self-enumeration, Aadhaar or mobile number will be mandatorily collected.

The Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner had prepared around three dozen questions to be asked to the citizens.

Those questions include whether a family has telephone, internet connection, mobile or smartphone, bicycle, scooter or motorcycle or moped and whether they own a car, jeep or a van.

The citizens will also be asked questions such as the cereal they consume in the household, main source of drinking water, main source of lighting, access to latrine, type of latrine, waste water outlet, availability of bathing facility, availability of kitchen and LPG/PNG connection, main fuel used for cooking and availability of radio, transistor and television.

The citizens will also be asked about the predominant material of floor, wall and roof of the census house, condition of the census house, total number of persons normally residing in the household, whether head of the household is a woman, whether the head of the household belongs to Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe, number of dwelling rooms exclusively in possession of the household and the number of married couple or couples living in the household among others.

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