Cuttack: From February 15 to April 15, door-to-door house enumeration will be undertaken across Cuttack district as part of the upcoming Census, with the entire exercise being conducted digitally for the first time.
The district administration has completed all preparatory arrangements for the census, which will be carried out in two phases over this year and the next. The first phase, the House Listing and Housing Census, will begin on February 15 and conclude by mid-April, while the actual Population Census will follow subsequently.
Cuttack District Collector Dattatraya Bhausaheb Shinde said the census will be conducted through a dedicated mobile application, making it a 100 per cent digital exercise. Enumerators will visit every household in each sahi to collect basic housing and household information. During this phase, enumerators will seek responses to 33 questions from the head of each household.
The information to be collected will include the total number of houses, type of house, materials used for construction of walls, number of rooms in use, as well as demographic details such as caste, gender, number of family members and particulars of married couples residing in the household. Certain new data points, including caste-related information, have been introduced this time, for which special sensitisation has been carried out, the Collector said.
Around 4,500 enumerators have been appointed for the house enumeration work, assisted by nearly 700 supervisors. Training for the census workforce has already begun. The first round of training for district-level master trainers was held on Tuesday, following which they will train block-level master trainers. The latter will then impart training to enumerators and supervisors at the grassroots level.
As part of the administrative arrangement, Tehsildars will act as Census Officers in their respective rural areas, while Executive Officers will serve as Census Officers in urban local bodies. At the district level, the Collector will function as the Census Officer, with the Additional District Magistrate (General) appointed as the Nodal Officer. A Deputy Collector and an Assistant Collector have also been assigned specific responsibilities for the census operations.
“The house-to-house enumeration from February 15 to April 15 will help us ascertain the total number of households in the district. Enumerators will cover every habitation. The actual population census will be undertaken next year,” the Collector said.
