By IANS,
Mumbai : Congress MP Sanjay Nirupam Tuesday appealed to the Maharashtra government to postpone the forthcoming census exercise in Mumbai, scheduled in May-June, to prevent injustice to millions of north Indians and Maharashtrians.
In a letter to Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, the MP from Mumbai North said the census exercise will be conducted at a time when millions of north Indians and people from Konkan go to their native places for the summer vacations.
“If we conduct the census in these months, naturally these people will be omitted from the data and it will be an injustice to them,” Nirupam said.
He urged Chavan to take up the matter with Home Minister P. Chidambaram and the Census Commissioner and request them to postpone the programme for Mumbai.
The census will also garner crucial data which is expected to be used for providing a Unique Identification Number to all Indians, Nirupam said.
Of Mumbai’s around 13 million people, nearly an estimated eight million hail from the coastal Konkan region, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Gujarat, Rajasthan as well as south India.
A vast majority of them leave the city during the summer vacation and start returning only after mid-June when schools and colleges reopen for the next academic year.