Govt Awaits Covid to Go Away Completely to Conduct Census Before Implementing Women Reservation Bill

Raga63

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posted on 1 year ago — updated on 1 second ago

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The government had said in almost all parliamentary sessions after Covid hit the country that it has the 'clear intent' to conduct the census but the pandemic has delayed the process

While the women reservation bill was tabled in the Lok Sabha recently, it will not be implemented in the next general elections. The Covid pandemic is delaying the new census, which forms the basis of the delimitation process, according to the replies given by the Ministry of Home Affairs in Parliament in July.

The next delimitation will take place in 2026. This indicates that the bill could come into effect only before the 2029 Lok Sabha elections. Thus, the bill needs to overcome two major hurdles – census and delimitation — before it gets implemented.

The government had said in almost all parliamentary sessions that it has the “clear intent” to conduct the census but the Covid-19 pandemic is delaying it. “The intent of the government for conducting Census 2021 was notified in Gazette of India on March 28, 2019. Due to the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic, the Census 2021 and the related field activities have been postponed,” the Union home ministry said in Parliament on July 26.

However, all Covid-related protocols were lifted by the government last year itself, including the necessity to wear masks and social distancing.

Why is census important for the women reservation bill to be implemented? The census collects data based on demography and several socio-economic parameters such as education, religion, caste, language, marriage, fertility, disability, occupation and migration of individuals.

The exercise to collect data for the 2021 Census was scheduled to be carried out across the country from April 1 to September 30, 2020.

In May, the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India launched an e-book with a form for the mammoth decennial exercise that would now include elaborate questions on disabilities and cooking gas connections. The government is also reportedly planning to give people the option of filling the form online.

The e-book on census contains questions such as ‘What caused your physical disability, if any’? ‘What stream of education did you study’? ‘Do you have access to toilets’? ‘Do you have LPG or PNG connections’? ‘Do you have access to the internet’? ‘Do you own a house but don’t live in it’? ‘Do you have a DTH connection’? ‘Do you drink packaged water’? ‘What is the main cereal consumed by your family’?