Union Home Minister Amit Shah has mooted the idea of a multipurpose identity card for citizens with all utilities like Aadhaar, passport, driving licence and bank accounts.

Mr Shah said, there should be a system that all data should be put together in a single card and in this regard, the digital census is very important.

Laying the foundation stone for Janganana Bhawan at Mansingh Road in New Delhi today, the Home Minister said, the Government will complete the massive Census exercise in March 2021 and for the first time a National Population Register, NPR will be prepared. He said, NPR will help in addressing problems ranging from law and order to nutrition.

Mr Shah said, the census is the basis of development of the last man in the queue and lays the road map for the future of the country.

The Home Minister said, this time the government is going to spend around 12 thousand crore rupees on NPR and census which is the highest among all the census conducted so far.

He said, a mobile App will be used in Census 2021 and it will be a transformation from paper census to digital census. Mr Shah said, it will be the 16th census from 1865 when the exercise was conducted for the first time. After independence, it will be the 8th one.

Mr Shah also spoke about several schemes which have brought changes in the lives of people.  

Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai, Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla, Registrar General and Census Commissioner Dr Vivek Joshi were also present on this occasion.

The work of the seven-storey green building which will be built at the cost of 44 crore rupees will be completed by 2021.