Census 2011 begins; Will individually record faith

The second phase of Census 2011 began today with the enumeration of President Pratibha Patil at Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi.

After successfully completing the first phase of the Census, called the Houselisting and Housing Census from April to September 2010, the second phase called the Population Enumeration is being conducted simultaneously all over the country from February 9 – 28, 2011.

Census 2011 will be the 15th National Census of the country. The Government has also decided to prepare a National Population Register (NPR) along with the Census 2011.

Speaking after her enumeration, the President asked all persons to take part whole heartedly in the Census operation and to take it as a national duty. Home Minister P Chidambaram and the Minister of State for Home, Gurudas Kamat, were also present on the occasion, according to an official release.

The Indian Census has been the most credible source of information on demography, economic activity, literacy and education, housing and household amenities, urbanization, fertility and mortality, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, language, religion, migration, disability and many other socio-cultural data since 1872.

The exercise will cover 35 States and Union Territories, 640 districts, 5767 tehsils, 7742 towns and more than 600,000 villages. More than 24 crore households will be visited and about 1.2 billion people enumerated.

The Office of Registrar General and Census Commissioner have cautioned enumerators not to mistake religion for caste names. "You are bound to record faithfully whatever religion is returned by the respondent," states the instruction.

With growing instances of inter-religious marriages, the 2011 Census will record the religion of each household member and not assume that religion of the head is the same as for every member in the family, according to a leading daily.

The enumeration forms have six major religions listed â€" Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Jain.