Even though Chennai remains the district with the highest urban population in the State, its suburbs in Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur have registered higher population growth than that of the city in the last decade.
According to the provisional population totals on rural-urban distribution of population in the State released here on Tuesday by the Director of Census Operations -Tamil Nadu S.Gopalakrishnan, Chennai has 13.39 per cent of the urban population in the State with 46.8 lakh people. The decadal growth of population in Chennai during 2001-2011 is 7.77 per cent. The population growth in urban local bodies of Kancheepuram in the last decade is 65.33 per cent. Rural parts of Kancheepuram district registered a decadal growth of 8.24 per cent in the same period.
Tiruvallur, another adjoining district that comprises a large number of Chennai's suburbs, has registered a decadal population growth of 62.19 per cent in its urban areas. However, the rural areas of Tiruvallur district have registered a growth of 3.03 per cent in the last decade.
Mr.Gopalakrishnan said that the higher decadal growth rate in the two districts of Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur has been caused by large-scale migration of people in search of jobs in Chennai's suburbs.
“The decadal growth in Chennai's suburbs is much more than the birth rate. The growth that has taken place is on account of migration,” he said.
The maximum growth has taken place in nearby areas such as Sholinganallur and Ambattur in the adjoining districts. Localities far away from the city such as Cheyyur and Tiruthani in these adjoining districts have relatively lesser decadal growth of population, said Mr.Gopalakrishnan.
According to the provisional population totals, the population density in Chennai has increased from 24,963 per sq km in 2001 to 26,903 in 2011, making it the district with the second highest density in the country.
The provisional population is arrived at by adding the population as reported by each enumerator in their enumeration block. There could be errors in addition or cases of omission or duplication of enumeration blocks in the provisional population totals. The final population will be released next year after scanning of census schedules, data capture and processing.
Many of the local bodies in the two districts near Chennai have qualified as census town in the 2011 Census as they have a population of over 5,000, population density more than 400 per sq.km and at least 75 per cent of the male workers are engaged in non-agricultural pursuits.
Corporation Commissioner D.Karthikeyan was present at the function organised at Ripon Buildings for the release of the provisional population totals on rural-urban distribution of population.
