Gaya: Preparations for the upcoming census, India’s first fully digital enumeration exercise, were reviewed at a meeting held at the Gaya district collectorate on Tuesday. The meeting was chaired by revenue and land reforms department principal secretary, C K Anil, who described it as one of the world’s largest administrative exercises conducted every decade to capture demographic, social and economic data.The principal secretary said, “The exercise, governed by the Census Act 1948, will be India’s 16th overall and the eighth since independence. For the first time, the entire process will be conducted using mobile applications and digital devices. As per the schedule, first phase will begin with self-enumeration from April 17 to May 1, allowing citizens to submit their details online. It will be followed by house listing and enumeration from May 2 to 31, during which enumerators will visit households and collect responses to 33 questions through mobile apps.”District magistrate (DM) Shashank Shubhankar informed at the meeting that four master trainers have already received state-level training. Apart from this, two-phase training programme was conducted in March. While the first phase focused on district and the charge census officers, the second phase trained 168 field trainers in multiple batches”.“The district administration has identified 34 charge areas, deploying 9,475 enumerators and 1,406 supervisors for the exercise. User IDs have been generated for all charge census officers, who have been directed to create login credentials for enumerators and supervisors ahead of the next training round scheduled from April 6 to 17”.“The administration is focused on ensuring technological readiness and spreading awareness to facilitate smooth execution of the nationwide exercise” he added.