Urban India is characterized by distinct contrasts in the provision and utilization of physical, health and educational facilities between the privileged and the disadvantaged. Wide disparities are observed with regard to access, enrolment, retention and achievement levels of education between the "haves mainly residing in the core city areas and the "have-nots primarily putting up in the slums, squatter settlements and on the street. The inequalities and unbalanced development in elementary education in urban areas pose a stumbling block for the realization of the goal of UEE. One of the significant reasons for the inability to plan for the urban disadvantaged is the non availability of adequate data on account of two main reasons - they remain uncounted and does not figure into the official statistics because they are living on the unauthorized land or information collected is compiled into statistical averages that reflect the urban areas as a whole and disaggregated information for different strata of population is not available. Therefore the data tell us almost nothing about those marginalized children who are out of the school system. Informal or illegal settlements do not appear on city maps, therefore accurate number of school population is not known and the schools are not planned for them. Measurement shortcomings cripple the ability of educational planners to design or implement relevant programmes. In the above context, the present paper tries to highlight the significance of data for addressing the educational needs of the vulnerable children of urban areas. It describes the existing sources of educational data available in country for the urban areas. The paper identifies the specific data needs and requirements for urban areas to achieve the target UEE. The paper argues that in addition to the official statistics, surveys on various disadvantaged sections and regions in urban areas need to be carried out to understand the extent of deprivation and evolve suitable focused interventions to ensure equitable and inclusive educational development.