NEW DELHI, Oct 30: The population enumeration, the second and penultimate phase of Census 2027, will commence on January 10, 2027, across the country with self-enumeration.
The door-to-door enumeration will begin January 25 and will end on February 28 next year where enumerators will ask a set of 40 questions, including 13 new questions such as caste, (other than Scheduled Tribe/Scheduled Caste), religion, place and date of birth of both parents, number of bank accounts, spouse’s name, nationality, digital literacy, permanent residential address, place of Covid-19 vaccination, passport number, driving licence availability and mobile, Aadhaar and voter ID numbers, if available, which will be asked for the first time.
The exercise will be conducted in the four poll-bound States of Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Uttarakhand and Punjab from November 16, 2026 to January 5, 2027, ahead of the rest of the country. November 16 is when the self-enumeration portal goes live in these four States, and door-to-door enumeration will begin December 1.
Other than these States, the exercise has been completed in Ladakh and the snow-bound areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand on September 30. The exercise has been deferred indefinitely in ethnic violence hit Manipur.
On Friday, the Registrar General of India and Census Commissioner Mritunjay Kumar Narayan notified, “the conduct of census of the population shall be undertaken from the 25th January, 2027 to the 28th February, 2027 with a revisional round from the 1st March, 2027 to the 5th March, 2027; for the conduct of the said census, there shall be an option for self-enumeration from the 10th January, 2027 to the 24th January, 2027, just before the start of the house to house population enumeration; the reference date for the said census shall be 00:00 hours of the 1st day of March, 2027.”
The notification has been issued under Section 3 of the Census Act, 1948 (37 of 1948) read with rules 6A and 6D of the Census Rules, 1990.
The first notification for Population Census 2027 was issued on June 16, 2025 where it was said the next Census will be conducted in February 2027, except for Ladakh and the snowbound areas of Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. The first phase of Census- the Houselisting Operations (HLO) started April1 this year and has been completed across the country on September 30, except in Manipur. This is the first digital Census and the first to enumerate caste and allow self-enumeration.
(Manas Dasgupta)