Census Dates Announced: Know When House Listing Will Begin

New Delhi: The Ministry of Home Affairs has released a major update regarding the upcoming Census, scheduled for next year. Information about some phases of Census 2027 has been shared. The Ministry of Home Affairs stated that the first phase of the Census will begin this year, between April and September 2026.

According to the government notification, the first phase of Census 2027 (the house listing operation) will last for approximately 30 days between April 1 and September 30, 2026. This exercise will be conducted in all states and Union Territories.

A 15-day period for self-enumeration will also be available immediately before this house listing operation. This time the census will be conducted in digital mode, in two phases… The government informed Parliament about the dates.

The Census was supposed to be held in 2021
It is worth noting that the census in India is conducted every 10 years. According to this schedule, the Census should have been held in 2021, but its date was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, the process of counting the country’s population will be conducted in two phases: house listing and housing census from April to September 2026; and population enumeration in February 2027.

An official notification issued by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan, stated, “A 15-day period for self-enumeration will be available immediately before the 30-day house-to-house enumeration campaign.”

Caste-based data will also be included
The government had previously announced that caste-related data would also be collected electronically during the population enumeration phase of Census 2027. The last comprehensive caste-based census was conducted by the British between 1881 and 1931. Caste has been excluded from all censuses conducted since independence.

The decision to include caste enumeration in the census was taken by the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on April 30 last year. This first digital census will require approximately 3 million employees. To ensure accurate data, information will be collected using a mobile application available for both Android and iOS devices.

According to the 2011 census, the country’s population was 1.21 billion. Of this, 620 million (51.54 percent) were men and 580 million (48 percent) were women.