In India and some other countries, a census town is designated as a town that satisfies certain characteristics.
India
In India, a census town is one which is not statutorily notified and administered as a town, but nevertheless whose population has attained urban characteristics.
They are characterized by the following:
* Population exceeds 5,000
* At least 75% of main male working population is employed outside the agricultural sector
* Minimum
population density
Population density (in agriculture: Stock (disambiguation), standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geographical ...
of 400 persons per km
2
Examples of Indian census towns include
Avinissery in
Thrissur District of
Kerala
Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South C ...
,
Greater Noida and
Chakeri in
Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 1950 ...
,
Indranagar
Indranagar is a census town in West Tripura district in the Indian state of Tripura.
The locality is famous for the Kali temple. Everyday many devotees are found to offer worship to the goddess Kali. During Dewali a fair is held for three days. ...
in
Tripura
Tripura (, Bengali: ) is a state in Northeast India. The third-smallest state in the country, it covers ; and the seventh-least populous state with a population of 36.71 lakh ( 3.67 million). It is bordered by Assam and Mizoram to the eas ...
,
Begampur,
Chandpara,
Nandigram,
Chittaranjan and
Beliatore in
West Bengal
West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the four ...
,
Chevella in
Telangana
Telangana (; , ) is a state in India situated on the south-central stretch of the Indian peninsula on the high Deccan Plateau. It is the eleventh-largest state and the twelfth-most populated state in India with a geographical area of and ...
,
Amini in
Lakshadweep
Lakshadweep () is a union territory of India. It is an archipelago of 36 islands divided into three island subgroups: the Laccadive Islands in the middle with the Amindivi Islands in the north separated roughly by the 11th parallel north and ...
,
Deolali in
Maharashtra,
Ghatshila in
Purbi Singhbhum District of
Jharkhand
Jharkhand (; ; ) is a state in eastern India. The state shares its border with the states of West Bengal to the east, Chhattisgarh to the west, Uttar Pradesh to the northwest, Bihar to the north and Odisha to the south. It has an area of . ...
,
BGR Township (
Bongaigaon Refinery Township) in
Bongaigaon Urban Agglomeration of
Assam
Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...
,
Pileru in
Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to t ...
,
Chikhli in
Gujarat
Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the nin ...
and
Ichgam
Ichgam , also known as Ichigam, is a census town located in the Indian administered union territory of Jammu and Kashmir's Budgam district. It falls under the administrative division of tehsil Budgam, one of the nine tehsils of district Budg ...
in
Jammu and Kashmir.
Census 2011
The number of census towns (CTs) in India grew from 1,362 in 2001 to 3,894 in 2011. As per Pradhan (2013), these CTs account for 30% of the urban growth in the last decade. Pradhan also notes that the largest increase in the number of CTs was in the states of West Bengal and Kerala.
Ministry of Urban Development Notification
The Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India, in May 2016 asked the 28 states in India to take action to start the process of recognizing CTs as urban areas. The argument given for this conversion was that a statutory Urban Local Body (ULB) is required to ensure planned development of these areas. In this notification, Rajiv Gauba, Secretary (Urban Development) notes:
The opportunity of planned urban development might get lost if unplanned construction and ad hoc provisioning of infrastructure is allowed to take place over a long time.
Additionally, the Ministry, in the notification, has informed the states that they stand to gain from according statutory status to these towns. With a greater number of statutory towns, the states would be able to get more money from the Centre as per the 14th
Finance Commission Report. Additionally, under
Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), 50% weightage is given to the number of statutory towns in the state/UT to determine the allocation of funds to these states/UTs.
Following this notification, Maharashtra state government converted 19 CTs in the state to statutory ULBs.
These 19 CTs are in close proximity to the town of Pune and this conversion is expected to lessen the infrastructure and population pressures on the town.
Ireland
According to Ireland's
Central Statistics Office, a census town by definition has a "cluster of fifty or more occupied dwellings, not having a legally defined boundary, in which within a distance of 800 metres there is a nucleus of either thirty occupied houses on both sides of the road or twenty occupied houses on one side of the Road". Census towns were distinct from
municipal towns; the latter, which had legally defined boundaries and local government powers, were abolished by the
Local Government Reform Act 2014
The Local Government Reform Act 2014 (No. 1) is an act of the Oireachtas which provided for a major restructuring of local government in Ireland with effect from the 2014 local elections. It merged some first-tier county and city councils, a ...
.
References
External links
* {{cite web, url=http://www.censusindia.net/results/town.php?stad=A&state5=999, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040616075334/http://www.censusindia.net/results/town.php?stad=A&state5=999, archive-date=2004-06-16, title= Census of India 2001: Data from the 2001 Census, including cities, villages and towns (Provisional), access-date=2008-11-01, publisher= Census Commission of India
Types of towns