New Delhi, Oct 31 : Union Minister of State for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying George Kurian on Friday launched the National Marine Fisheries Census (MFC) 2025 in Kochi, moving the marine fishing sector from paper-based to fully digital household enumeration.

The minister also launched the VyAS-BHARAT and VyAS-SUTRA mobile applications at the event, which will be used for conducting the census.

"The census will digitally enumerate approximately 1.2 million fisher households in around 5,000 marine villages across 13 coastal states and union territories, including the Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep," said the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying.

The census will be a household-level enumeration of fishers, fishing crafts, gears, and infrastructure across over 1,200 landing centres, 50 fishing harbours, jetties, markets, and processing plants with the help of specially designed mobile-based applications.

The entire enumeration will be fully digital and paperless, the ministry said, adding that it will be conducted using multilingual Android apps developed by the ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute.

Core household data collection will take place over 45 days, from November 3 to December 18.

"This digital approach enables real-time, geo-referenced data collection, eliminating manual errors and significantly accelerating data processing," the Ministry said.

VyAS-SUTRA will enable real-time supervision and monitoring of households and enumerators through multi-tier web dashboards, ensuring accountability across all levels of census management.

The scope of the MFC-2025 has been significantly expanded to capture a deep, granular understanding of the socio-economic status of the coastal population, ensuring future government interventions are more precise and impactful, the Ministry said.

At the event, Kurian also urged the fishermen and fish farmers to register on the NFDP portal to avail benefits from the government.

MFC-2025 aims to broaden data collection to include total family income, homeownership, liabilities, credit sources, insurance status, pandemic impacts, and benefits from programmes like PM-MKSSY.

/IANS