Calcutta, July 9 :     Retired ICS officer, writer, art critic and scholar Asok Mitra died at a south Calcutta nursing home today. He was 82 and is survived by his widow and a daughter. Born in 1917, Mitra studied at Presidency College in the city and Merton College in Oxford. He is best known as a member of the Indian Civil Service which he joined in 1939. Mitra?s tenure as registrar-general saw the transformation of the Indian census to an authoritative body of data. He was professor of population studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University between 1974-1982. Mitra was awarded the Rabindra Puroshkar for his autobiography Tin Kuri Das. He wrote several books on art and also translated Rabindranath Tagore?s Chaturanga to English.