On the last day of the main round of the Census 2011, officials said that the enumeration process had covered an average of 97 to 98 per cent of the State.
While reports coming in from various districts in Karnataka pegged the success rate at 98 per cent, in Bangalore the coverage rate reported by charge officials is in the range of 96 to 98 per cent, T.K. Anil Kumar, Director of Census Operations, Karnataka, told The Hindu.
Re-check
Starting Tuesday, census officials across the State will spend the next five days doing a re-check of their work over the past two weeks. “They will revisit their areas to finish up on homes or buildings they may have missed out, and fill in the gaps in the exercise,” Mr. Kumar added.
The census office, which had publicised its dedicated helpline for people to call in and register complaints if they had been left out, had received over 600 calls in the last one week. “We have attended to all the complaints, conveyed it to the corporation offices and charge officials who are supervising each ward and got back their response on each complaint. All compliance reports are also being recorded,” he said.
Mr. Kumar said that while rural areas have been easier to enumerate, Bangalore has been a big challenge for the reference points had changed drastically. In districts, the differences were in terms of a few points but in Bangalore things had changed so much that there have been multiple challenges in finishing this exercise, he said.
March 25 deadline
The final results, after putting together all the data that has been collected (including all the 29 questions that have been asked) will take some time. The Census directorate has promised to publish the final all-India figures by March 25. Starting March 6, charge officers (at ward and taluk-level) will hand over the data to the districts. The districts are required to hand it over to the main census office in each State by March 9, including all the details, the hard copies of the schedules (the census forms that have been used) and the compiled statistics, Mr. Kumar said. If everything goes as planned, we hope to complete the entire process by March 25, he added.
