Paper-II on Census 2011 released SRINAGAR: As a large number of people have migrated to the urban areas during past three decades in Jammu and Kashmir, there has been sharp decline of 7 percent in rural population, according to the recently released census data. Addressing a press conference here, Director Census Jammu and Kashmir, Farooq Ahmad Factoo, said 72 percent people live in rural areas while the figure was 79 percent in Census of 1981. He said the population in urban areas has gone up from 21 percent to 28 percent during these years. "Jammu and Kashmir has a total population of 1, 25, 48, 926. The population in rural areas is 91, 34, 820 and the number of persons living in urban areas is 34, 14, 106. The decadal growth in urban areas is 35.66 percent and it is 19.77 percent in rural areas. The overall decadal growth is 23.71 percent," said Farooq. According to the Census figures, Srinagar has the highest number of urban population with 12, 34, 425 persons followed by Jammu with a population of 7, 57, 829 persons and Anantnag with 2, 78, 512 persons. Baramulla accounts for highest number of persons living in rural areas with 8, 40, 948 persons followed by Anantnag with 7, 91, 237 persons and Jammu with 7, 68, 577 persons. "In rural areas there are 899 females per thousand males and in urban areas this number is 840. According to 2001 Census this stood at 917 and 819 for rural and urban areas respectively," said Farooq. He said Jammu and Kashmir has a total literate population of 72, 45, 053 persons. "Out of the total literate population 48, 98, 008 literate persons are living in urban areas while as the number of literates in case of rural areas is 23, 47, 045 persons. In the urban areas Srinagar has the highest number of literates with a literate population of 7, 73, 109 followed by Jammu with 6, 10, 714 and Anantnag with 1, 70, 749 literate persons respectively. In the rural areas Jammu has the highest literate population of 5, 36, 949 followed by Baramulla and Kupwara with 4, 54, 730 and 3, 93, 975 literate persons respectively," said Farooq. According to the Census figures, Jammu and Kashmir has 20, 08, 642 child population in the age group of 0-6 years. The child population is 15, 96,076 in rural areas and in urban areas this is 4, 12, 566. "The decadal census exercise was taken up during February 9-28 this year and the provisional figures with respect to some variables were given on April 7. We covered 22 districts and 82 tehsils in this exercise along with all the towns and villages. Over the last Census eight new districts were created and these too were included in this decade's Census," said Farooq. Replying to a question Farooq said that 234 villages were found to be un-inhabited adding that last time around the number of un-inhabited villages was 281.