Chandigarh: To identify the poor and throw up the caste composition in the state – an exercise being undertaken after 1932, a socio-economic and caste basis census operation has got underway in Punjab.
Punjab ITI Ltd, an information technology company, is providing the technology back up, which will have hand held tablet PCs with touch screen mechanisms for doing data entry for the state government.
The Punjab government has appointed 13,059 enumerators, who along with data entry operators are scheduled to do a house to house visit between September 20 and October 31 for gathering the data.
The census department has authorized state governments to conduct the socio-economic and caste based census in collaboration with information technology companies.
In the districts, the deputy commissioners have been made principal census officers and in urban centres, municipal commissioners have been assigned the task.
The last below poverty line (BPL) census was conducted in 2001.
A report of Tendulkar committee had found that 22.1% of the rural population and 18.7 % of the urban population was registered under BPL.
