Context: The Centre is on track to push the 2021 Census to 2022 on account of the country’s continuing preoccupation with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Census

• Population Census is the total process of collecting, compiling, analyzing or otherwise disseminating demographic, economic and social data pertaining, at a specific time, to all persons in a country or a well-defined part of a country. As such, the census provides a snapshot of the country’s population and housing at a given point of time.
• The census provides information on size, distribution and socio-economic, demographic and other characteristics of the country’s population. The data collected through the census are used for administration, planning and policy making as well as management and evaluation of various programmes by the government, NGOs, researchers, commercial and private enterprises, etc.

Key Points

• The Census exercise was to have been conducted in two phases — House Listing and Housing Census from April to September 2020 and Population Enumeration from February 9 to February 28, 2021.
• The first phase of the Census and the updating of the National Population Register (NPR) were initially to be rolled out in some States on April 1, 2020, but were postponed due to the pandemic. 
• The plan to shift the census is on account of the pandemic.
• The government has been fully occupied in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. First, it was the measures taken to deal with the pandemic and now the massive vaccination programme under way across the country.

Census of India

• The decennial Census of India has been conducted 15 times, as of 2011.
• While it has been undertaken every 10 years, beginning in 1872 under British Viceroy Lord Mayo, the first complete census was taken in 1881.
• Post 1949, it has been conducted by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India under the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
• All the censuses since 1951 were conducted under the 1948 Census of India Act. The last census was held in 2011, whilst the next will be held in 2021.