Kolkata, July 31 -- The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will rope in nearly 1000 schools to drive public participation in India's first digital Census, even as the state government reviews the deployment of teachers for the exercise following concerns that large-scale Census duty could disrupt classes in some schools.

Municipal Commissioner and KMC Administrator Smita Pandey on Friday said around 700 government and government-aided schools and 300 reputed private schools would be involved in the awareness campaign. One 'Census Prefect' will be appointed in every class from VIII to XII, with each student encouraging and assisting at least 10 families, apart from their own, to complete the online self-enumeration process.

School Education Minister Dipak Barman said the department was examining cases where a high number of teachers from individual schools had been assigned Census duty after concerns were raised by educational institutions. He said the issue had been brought to the notice of Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari and efforts were being made to minimise deployment in such schools. The proposal for morning classes during the Census period, he added, had come from teachers themselves.

Meanwhile, KMC has created 8,145 house-listing blocks across the city's 144 wards and aims to bring 2.5 to 3 million of Kolkata's estimated 5.5 million residents under self-enumeration between August 1 and August 15, reducing the burden on field enumerators.

Residents can complete the exercise through the Census portal or by scanning a QR code. After submission, the system will generate a unique 11-digit Self-Enumeration ID (SEID), which will allow enumerators to automatically retrieve the information during field verification between August 16 and September 14. No documents, including Aadhaar or voter identity cards, will be required, and people staying outside Kolkata can also register online using their city address.

Self-enumeration has been made mandatory for all KMC officers and employees, with the campaign beginning on Saturday through the registration of Solid Waste Management staff. Special drives will also be conducted in slum and colony areas with support from the Census Cell, while high-rise residential complexes, CREDAI and trade associations will be involved in the outreach. KMC has deployed 8,200 enumerators and 1,400 supervisors, with additional mock training scheduled from August 3 to 5.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.