A mobile app will be used in the next census of India which will be carried out in 2021, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said today. "A mobile app will be used in Census 2021. It will be atrans formation from paper census to digital census," Mr Shah said at eventin Delhi.

The Home Minister also proposed the idea of a multipurposeID card for every citizen which includes passport, Aaadhar and the voter card.Mr Shah said that the National Population Register is being prepared for the first time in the 2021 census.

"We can have just one card for all utilities likeAadhaar, passport, bank account, driving licence, voter card. This is apotential," he said. Mr Shah said there should also be a system that whena person dies, the information is updated in the population data automatically.Forthe first time in the 140-year history of the census in India, data is proposedto be collected through an app and people who conduct door-to-door countingwould be encouraged to use their own phone. India's last census was carried outin 2011 when the country's population stood at 121 crore.

In March this year, the government had announced that thenext census will be conducted in two phases with March 1, 2021 as the referencedate. For Jammu and Kashmir and snow-bound areas of Himachal Pradesh andUttarakhand, the reference date shall be the first day of October, 2020, thenotification saidA pre-test of Census 2021, which began on August 12, will goon till the end of this month.