Hit by a shortage of officers, the government has decided to hire its retired employees to contribute in the conduct of the mammoth Census exercise covering 1.2 billion residents spread over 35 states and Union Territories.

The government has floated 695 temporary posts to be filled by retired central and state government employees in the ranks of joint director (Census operations) up to the level of data entry operators to function under the office of the registrar general and census commissioner of India

The retired employees will be hired on temporary basis, for six months, which can be extended, with an approximate salary (with additional travelling and dearness allowance) in the range of Rs 26,000 to Rs 12,000 in various ranks

"For conduct of the 2011 Census, 695 temporary posts have been created for the Office of the Registrar General of India and its 33 directorates located in states and UTs for three years with effect from April 1, 2010

"Action has been initiated to fill up the vacancies by promotion or deputation as the adequate number of eligible employees is not available in the feeder grades of most of the posts and completion of the process of selection on deputation will take considerable time," the registrar genreal's office said in its letter to various ministries and government departments

The letter said that it has been decided that as an interim measure retired central or state government servants may be engaged to fill up the position at various levels.

The maximum age limit for such retired officials to apply for the job has been kept at 67 and an employee once hired cannot be "engaged for a post which is higher than the post from where he has retired. However, he can be considered for a lower post," the letter said.

The registrar general's office has floated the posts in various divisions and branches of Census operations like statistics, administration, map and geography research, printing, social studies, official language policy, data operators and stenographer.

The Census would cover all 640 districts, 5767 tehsils, 7742 towns and more than 6 lakhs villages in the country. More than 24 crore households will be visited and 1.20 billion people enumerated during this exercise. To carry out this massive exercise more than 2.5 million people will be engaged.