Amendment to Census Rules, 1990

Gazette Notification issued by the Central Government stating Amendment of Census Rules, 1990.

• It is officially counting the number of people who live in a country and also gathering information relating to them which may include their ages, jobs, gender etc.

• Census was conducted in India for the first time in the year 1872.
• From the year 1881, Census has been conducted in India regularly once a decade.

• The Registrar General and the Census Commissioner of India conducts the census in the country as per the provisions of Census of India Act, 1948.
• The above officer works under the administrative control of the Union Home Ministry.

• Census is the basis for reviewing the country's progress in the past decade, monitoring the ongoing schemes of the government and the impact they have had on the government and plan the future course of action.
• It provides detailed and authentic information on demography, economic activity, literacy and education, housing and household amenities, urbanisation, fertility and mortality, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, language, religion, migration, disability and many other socio-cultural and demographic data.

• Last census in India was conducted in the year 2011.
• The census exercise of the current decade has not been started and postponed due to the spread of Corona pandemic.
• The upcoming census will be India’s first digital census, though data will be collected during this exercise in both digital and paper format.
• Collection of data for compilation of National Population Registry will also be part of Census 2021 exercise.

• Clause C of Rule 2 of Census Rules, 1990 was amended to include terms “electronic form” and “self-enumeration”.

• Electronic Form: The amended rules state that it has the same meaning as clause (r) of section 2(1) of Information Technology Act, 2000.
  
  

  Definition of Electronic Form under Information Technology Act, 2000: "electronic form", with reference to information, means any information generated, sent, received or stored in media, magnetic, optical, computer memory, micro film, computer generated micro fiche or similar device.

• Self-Enumeration: filling, completion, and submission of the census schedule by respondents themselves.

• It will allow the Central Government to capture and store census related data in electronic format.
• Self-enumeration would facilitate the respondent to answer the questionnaire scheduled to be asked on their own.

• In Rule 5, the word “media” has been replaced with “electronic or any other media”. This would enable change regarding how the Census statistics should be published. 
• Change has also been brought to Rule 8 to widen the medium through which publicity for the census exercise could be conducted. Earlier, this list of modes only included radio, audio-visuals, and posters. Now, “print media, electronic media, and social media”, are also added to the list.