The biggest ever exercise to count the entire population of the country for census 2011 will be carried out from the 9th to 28th of this month. The Home Minister Mr. P. Chidambaram released the mascot for the mammoth exercise of enumeration classifying them according to their gender, religion, occupation, education , literacy marital status , culture , economic and several other parameters. Twenty nine questions have been devised for the purpose , some of them for the first time like ownership of mobiles phones , computers, banking services. Giving details the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India Dr. C. Chandramauli said that 2.7 million enumerators and supervisors will visit approximately 240 million house holds to count India's population. The population enumeration has already been done in snow bound areas in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and some other parts of the country. The revisional round will take place between the 1st and 5th of next month. Dr. Chandramouli said that the house-less population will be conducted on the night of 28th February.As reported information about the caste will be collected in a separate exercise to be held from June to September this year.Dr. Chandramouli also talked about the new features that have been added to the 2011 census. These include state of art designing of the schedules; new and revised questions on the institutional house holds, new category in gender parameter; a separate code for separated and divorced; new codes under status of school attendance and a separate code included under non economic activity. Census 2011 has also introduced new initiatives to sensitise school students about census operations. A toll free number and services of call centre have been introduced for grievances from public. Census 2011 will be using more developed ICR technology with advanced features so as to ensure faster completion of work in 1 to 2 years as against 4 to 5 years in 2001. Replying to questions on illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, the Commissioner said that everybody who is on Indian soil will be counted. He however made it clear that the information collected about the individual will be kept absolutely confidential.The whole exercise will cost 2200 crore rupees. The per capita cost will be less than 18.33 crore rupees, considered to be the most cost effective in the world.