Union Home Minister Amit Shah has said the government is planning to bring a bill in Parliament to link data related to birth and death with electoral rolls.
Shah said the census is a process that may form the basis of the development agenda.
“Digital, complete and accurate census figures will have multi-dimensional benefits…planning based on the census data ensures development reaches the poorest of the poor,” Shah was quoted by news agency PTI as having said.
Shah also said if the birth and death certificate data are preserved in a special way, development works can be planned properly.
"A bill to link death and birth register with electoral rolls will be introduced in parliament. Under this process, when a person turns 18, his or her name will be automatically included in the electoral rolls. Similarly, when a person dies, that information automatically will go to the Election Commission, which will start the process of deleting the name from the voters' list," Shah said.
Officials said the bill to amend the Registration of Birth and Death Act (RBD), 1969, will also facilitate matters related to the issuance of driving licences and passports and giving benefits of the government welfare schemes to people besides others, it added.
"If the data of birth and death certificate is preserved in a special way, then by estimating the time between the census, planning of development works can be done properly," he said.
Earlier the development process happened in fragments because adequate data for development was not available, he said.
"It took so long because no one had the idea as to how much money will be required to fulfil these basic necessities because the utility of the census was not conceived, the data related to the census were not accurate, the available data was not accessible online and coordination with census and planning authorities were absent," he said.
"I have been involved in the development process for the last 28 years and have seen that the development in our country has been demand-based. Public representatives who had sway could extract more benefits of development for his or her constituency. This is one of the reasons why our development has been fragmented and more expensive due to duplicacy," he said.
"Census is a process that outlines a nation's development process. So it is very much necessary to make it fool proof and flawless by using technologies like upgraded version of the SRS mobile app equipped with a geo-fencing facility," he said.
