The Union home ministry on Monday notified the long-awaited population census.
The gazette notification issued by Mritunjay Kumar Narayan, registrar-general and census commissioner, said: “The central government hereby declares that a census of the population of India shall be taken during the year 2027.”
It reaffirmed that the census proceedings would begin on October 1, 2026, in Ladakh “and snow-bound non-synchronous areas of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and the states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand”.
In the rest of the country, the exercise will start on March 1, 2027.
Home ministry sources said the census would be conducted in two phases. In phase one, that is, the houselisting operation, data will be collected on the housing conditions, assets and amenities of each household.
In the second phase, that is, the population enumeration, demographic, socioeconomic, cultural and other details of every person in each household will be collected.
Some 34 lakh enumerators and supervisers and around 1.3 lakh census functionaries will be deployed, and the exercise will be conducted through digital means, using
mobile applications.
The provision of self-enumeration will also be made available to the people and stringent data security measures will be put in place “to ensure data security at the time of collection, transmission and storage”.
Population censuses are supposed to take place every 10 years, but there hasn’t been any since 2011.
Caste count chaos
The Union home ministry debunked “misleading information” that there is no mention of a caste count in the gazette notification.
The Congress, which claims its relentless campaign forced a reluctant Centre to agree to a countrywide caste census, had claimed that the notification was “silent” on a caste census and asked whether this was “another U-turn” by the Narendra Modi government.
A home ministry spokesperson said: “The notification to conduct a census has been published in the Official Gazette today. The census will include caste enumeration as well.
“However, some misleading information is being spread that there is no mention of a caste census in the notification. It has already been mentioned in the press releases dated April 30, June 4 and June 15 that the census will also have caste enumeration.”
The Congress’s long campaign for a countrywide caste census had gained support from many Opposition parties but the Centre had initially dismissed it as a ploy to divide the country on caste lines.
However, in a surprise move on April 30, the Centre agreed to conduct a caste enumeration along with the population census but gave no timetable. On June 4, the government announced that the population census would be conducted in two phases in 2026 and 2027 “along with enumeration of castes”.