Home Minister P. Chidambaram, Home Secretary G.K. Pillai and census officials
visited the Rashtrapati Bhavan in the morning and collected details from the
president, a symbolic inauguration of the process to count and create a data
base of each citizen."My name is Pratibha Devi Singh Patil and my permanent
address is Jalgaon, Maharashtra," the president said, sharing her details with
a census enumerator.As the first citizen of India, Patil then signed the census
form and urged people in the country to "wholeheartedly take part in the
exercise and cooperate with census officials as it is in the nation's interest
and for the benefit of the people of this country".The officials led by
Chidambaram later visited Vice President Hamid Ansari at his 6, Maulana Azad
Road residence to enumerate him and his family.The gigantic exercise of the
Census 2011, which will be the 15th headcount of India's population since 1872,
will be undertaken in two phases to create a
database on demography, economic
activity, literacy and education, housing and household amenities,
urbanisation, fertility and mortality, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes,
language, religion and migration.
