Delhi has performed as the poorest of the lot in conducting Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC). While the State has completed 93 per cent enumeration work so far, majority of its counterpart across the country have either completed the census or are near completion.
An agenda of the Union Rural Development Ministry, the census has already missed three deadlines after its launch in December 2011. The Census aims to rank households based on their socio-economic status and to prepare a list of BPl families that can benefit from Central and State Governments’ welfare schemes. It would replace the current 2002 BPl list. The Ministry now hopes to complete the enumeration process by October end. But this will not be the final list.
“After completing the enumeration process, the States will have to prepare a draft list to be invited for comments and objections from the public,” sources in the Ministry said. According to the latest SECC data, 15 States — including Uttarakhand, Maharashtra and Punjab along with almost all the North-Eastern States have completed the enumeration process while others (See Box) are moving at their pace to reach to the finish point.
However, so far only Haryana and three Union Territories namely, Diu Daman, lakshwadeep and Nagaland have published the draft list. Most of the States have kept the target of August 31 for publication of the draft list. Delhi, the national Capital which started the enumeration process last year in January has been quite laggard given that it has just 33,362 Enumeration Blocks (EBs).
In contrast, populated States like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which fared poorly initially, have now crossed 95 per cent of the enumeration task. Moreover, uploading of data in many States is too slow. “It is found that most of the States/UTs have completed their enumeration and supervisory module but some Enumeration Blocks (EB) data is not uploaded due to mismatch of EB’s finalised on NIC website.
“For these, we have asked the States / UTs have to take the initiative to rectify the same as per process. The States/ UTs have to get the same with appropriate authority,” said the sources. The Ministry had initially set six months period, June-December 2011, as duration for the exercise. The deadline had to be extended twice again because of various reasons — including elections in some States and rains in other besides apathy that delayed the enumeration process. For instance, in Bihar, where 95 per cent of the enumeration process has been completed, the failure to pay the data entry operators stalled the exercise. In case of UP, elections in February last year hampered the census process.