Budget 2021: Census to go digital, FM sets aside 3,700cr – Times of India

NEW DELHI: Allocation for the home ministry in the Budget was marginally lower at Rs 1,66,547 crore as compared to Rs 1,67,250 crore allocated in the last Budget.
Though a sum of Rs 4,568 crore was earmarked in last budget for Census 2021 and National Population Register (NPR) exercise, their postponement due to Covid-19 left it largely unutilised, with the revised estimate for 2020-21 being just Rs 755 crore. Though no fresh start date has been announced yet for Census/NPR exercise, the finance minister said she was earmarking Rs 3,768 crore for the “first digital census in the history of India”.
“For this monumental and milestone-marking task, I have allocated Rs 3,768 crore in the year 2021-2022,” she stated in her budget speech in the Lok Sabha.
The home ministry has allocated Rs 1,03,803 crore for various central armed police forces like BSF, CRPF, ITBP, SSB and CISF, down from Rs 1,05,244 crore allocated in 2020-21 but higher than the Rs 98,202-crore revised estimate for 2020-21. Almost Rs 6,567 crore has been allocated to ITBP, which is now on winter deployment along the LAC areas in Ladakh at the centre of a standoff with the Chinese forces.