By- Correspondent | Date- October 20, 2011
The much discussed and awaited Socio- Economic and Caste Census 2011 was launched yesterday at NEDFi House, Guwahati by the chief minister of Assam, Tarun Gogoi. This census would be carried out by the Panchayat and Rural Development Department of the state and would take place from the 1st of December this year.
The census is scheduled to be completed within 45 days from December and would be carried out in over 65,350 blocks across the state. The entire exercise is set up for modern operations and would involve about 17,300 door-to-door census takers. It is also planned that over 20,000 tablet computers would be used in the project for data collation activities. This was disclosed by the state Minister for Panchayat & Rural Development, Rockybul Hussain.
It is being expected that the new set of socio-economic indicators obtained from the census would help in proper planning and implementation of various schemes aimed at poverty eradication and employment generation. The census, as stated by the chief minister, would aim at identifying Below Poverty Line (BPL) households that can benefit the welfare schemes of the Government.
It is to be mentioned that it is after 9 years that BPL census would be carried out in Assam. The last time was back in 2002.