New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah mooted the idea of one identity card for citizens that can club all the utilities like Aadhaar, passport, driving licence and bank accounts.
Shah suggested the idea of a multi-purpose identity card while laying the foundation stone of a new building, Janganana Bhawan, for the Registrar General of India and Census Commissioner named.
The seven-floor infrastructure is being built on a green-building at a cost of Rs 44 crore.
"Why can't we have just one card for all utilities like Aadhaar, passport, bank account, driving licence, voter card. There should be a system that all data should be put together in a single card. This is a potential. That is why digital census is very important," he said.
The home minister also said that a mobile app will be used for the first time in the 2021 census and the country would be moving from the pen and paper census to digital data, which will be a big revolution in the country's census exercise.
Informing that the 2021 census would be the most costly exercise done so far, the home minister said a total of Rs 12,000 crore was being spent this time.
Shah also said that a National Population Register (NPR) was being prepared for the first time in the 2021 census and the exercise would be digital.
The home minister also said the census, which will be carried out in 16 languages, will help in demarcating boundaries of municipal wards, assembly and Lok Sabha constituencies.
The home minister said India's population is 17.5 per cent of the world's total population while the geographical area is just 2.4 per cent of the total geographical area of the world.
"India has limited natural resources in comparison to the population. Therefore, to fill up this gap of inequality, we will have to work hard," he said.
For the 2021 census, the reference date is October 1, 2020, for Jammu and Kashmir and snow-bound areas of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand while for the rest of country, it is March 1, 2021.
(With inputs from PTI and IANS)
