Every Indian legally bound to answer Census queries: Govt

New Delhi, March 22

Minister of State (MoS) for Home Nityanand Rai today informed the Lok Sabha that every Indian was legally bound to answer Census questions and all requisite steps were being taken to carry out the enumeration and the National Population Register (NPR) exercises smoothly.

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The minister, while responding to a written question in the House, said the state governments appointed Census officers to take or aid in or supervise the Census exercise under the provisions of the Census Act, 1948.

“Every person is legally bound to answer the Census questions to the best of his or her knowable or belief,” Rai said. “All requisite measures are taken with the support of the state governments to conduct the Census and the National Population Register (NPR) exercise smoothly,” he further said.

The house-listing phase of the Census and the exercise to update the NPR were scheduled to be carried out across the country from April 1 to September 30, 2020, but it was postponed due to Covid.

According to the earlier schedule, the reference date of the Census was March 1, 2021, and October 1, 2020, in Jammu and Kashmir, HP and Uttarakhand. But the entire Census exercise continues to be on hold, as the government has not yet announced the new schedule.

Meanwhile, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra today alleged the Parliament had been converted into Rome’s Colosseum with Prime Minister Narendra Modi entering like a “gladiator” to chants of “Modi, Modi”.

She was taking swipes at ruling party MPs, greeting the PM with thunderous applause the first time he came to Parliament after leading the BJP to victory in four states recently.

Moitra was speaking during the discussion on the Budget for the Civil Aviation Ministry.

She also listed the names of women who have contributed to the aviation sector. Among the names she took were of the first woman to get a pilot’s licence Urmila Parekh, first woman commercial pilot Prem Mathur, first woman pilot of Indian airlines Durba Banerjee, the first woman IAF officer to fly in a combat zone Gunjan Saxena, captain of the first Boeing having all-women flight crew Saudamini Deshmukh and the youngest pilot in civil aviation history to command a commercial jet aircraft Nivedita Bhasin.