Shah Inaugurates Janganana Bhavan in Delhi, Says Bill Soon on Linking Birth, Death Data with Electoral Rolls

Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah on Monday inaugurated Janganana Bhavan in New Delhi and said the government is planning to bring a bill in Parliament to link data related to birth and death with electoral rolls and the overall development process.

Shah said that the under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the new Census will be the foundation for developing the country in a universal and comprehensive manner. He said that earlier there was also no link between the people conducting the census and those working on development planning.

“A bill to link death and birth register with electoral rolls will be introduced in parliament. Under this process, when a person turns 18, his or her name will be automatically included in the electoral rolls. Similarly, when a person dies, that information automatically will go to the Election Commission, which will start the process of deleting the name from the voters’ list,” he said.

Census Essential for All-inclusive Development: Shah

The minister said for the all-round and all-inclusive development of a country with such a huge geographical diversity, it is essential that development planning is based on data, for which we have no better means than Census.

He said that the government will now conduct the census electronically, in which every person will have the right to fill the data, it will be verified and audited, and it includes more than 35 parameters of socio-economic status. He said that the data which should be available for development was not there in the earlier censuses, nor was there a system for its analysis.

Shah also launched the web-portal for birth and death registration, the upgraded SRS mobile application for geofencing, and the web-portal for online sale of census publications. The Union Home Minister also released the Treatise on Indian Censuses since 1981.

He said that today the history of all the Censuses since 1981 has been compiled and published in the form of a book. He said that accountability can only be expected when responsibilities are fixed, and with the launch of upgraded SRS mobile application with geofencing today, employees at even the lowest level will become more responsible.

Shah said that the Census is the process of charting the course of development of the country, for this it is necessary that the SRS upgraded mobile application along with geofencing should create an alert system so that the officials doing the census will not go out of the allotted area.

He said that basic amenities like water, electricity, house, health were not available for almost 70 years after the independence because no one knew the availability of the necessary budget required for them, government led by PM Modi will provide facilities to the poor by proper analysis of the data.

He said that schemes were made, targets were fixed but there was no initiative to fix the targets of providing houses to all because no one knew how much budget was required for this purpose.

He said that such usage of Census was not possible earlier due to lack of access, accuracy, online unavailability of Census and bridge between planning and Census.