SEVEN PEOPLE HAVE COME FORWARD TO IDENTIFY THEMSELVES AS OTHER GENDER

PANJIM: Only seven people in Goa's population of 14.57 lakh have come forward and identified themselves as belonging to the "other" gender, a census official said Friday.  In a first, the Census 2011 had included "other" as a third option for those who chose not to identify themselves as either male or female.

"Seven persons have identified themselves as belonging to the 'other' category. We, however, cannot give you a comparative decadal increase or decrease, because we did not have the category during the last census," census director A.K. Wasnik told reporters here.

According to provisional census figures, Goa is populated by 7,40,711 men and 7,17,012 women, which takes the state's population to 14,57,723. "The decadal population growth in Goa is 8.17 percent," he said.

Vasnik also said that Goa's least populated village Codal, located in the Satari sub-district in north Goa, has a population of five - two females and three males. The most populated village is Shiroda, 30 km from here, where the population is 14,030.  The least populated town is Pernem, 25 km from here, with a population of 5,025, while the town with the highest population is Margao with 87,678 people.

Wasnik said Goa's population is 0.12 percent of the national figure and it ranked "third or fourth" from the bottom in the list of most populated states.  More than 3,600 officials were engaged in the census enumeration task which was spread over two months from February and March. – IANS