Census 2027 begins on April 1

• The first phase of Census 2027 began on April 1.

• This is the world’s largest population count exercise.

• Census 2027 marks a significant milestone as India’s first-ever fully digital Census. 

• For the first time, the option of self-enumeration will also be available.

• This will be the 16th Census in the series since 1872 and the eighth Census since Independence. 

• The Union Cabinet has approved the proposal for conducting Census of India 2027 at a cost of Rs 11,718.24 crore.

Census

• The Indian Census is the largest administrative and statistical exercise in the world. 

• The Census of India is conducted under the provisions of the Census Act, 1948 and the Census Rules, 1990.

• The Census is the largest single source of a variety of statistical information on different characteristics of the people of India conducted on the basis of the Census Act.

• The Census is the basis for reviewing the country’s progress in the past decade, monitoring the ongoing schemes of the government and plan for the future.

• This reliable, time-tested exercise has been bringing out a veritable wealth of statistics beginning from 1872 when the first Census was conducted in India non-synchronously in different parts.

• The government decided in May 1949 to initiate steps for developing systematic collection of statistics on the size of population, its growth, etc, and established an organisation in the Ministry of Home Affairs under Registrar General and Census Commissioner.

• This organisation was made responsible for generating data on population statistics, including vital statistics and Census. Later, this office was also entrusted with the responsibility of implementation of Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969.

• The previous Census was in 2011. 

• The decadal exercise which was scheduled to take place in 2021 got postponed due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic across the country.

• The population of the country as per the Census 2011 was 121.19 crore of which 62.37 crore (51.54 per cent) were males and 58.64 crore (48.46 per cent) were females.

How Census 2027 will be conducted?

• About 30 lakh field functionaries including enumerators, supervisors, master trainers, charge officers and principal/district census officers will be deployed for data collection, monitoring and supervision of Census operations. 

The Census of India would be conducted in two phases: 

i) Houselisting and Housing Census (the housing conditions, assets and amenities of each household) – April to September 2026.

ii) Population Enumeration (PE) (the demographic, socio-economic, cultural and other details of every person in each household) – February 2027.

• For the UT of Ladakh and snow bound non-synchronous areas of UT of Jammu & Kashmir and states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, PE shall be conducted in September 2026.

• The Census provides detailed and authentic information on demography, economic activity, literacy and education, housing and household amenities, urbanisation, fertility and mortality, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, language, religion, migration, disability besides others.

• The government has notified a set of 33 questions to be asked during the first phase of Census 2027.

• The enumerators also collect data related to cultivators and agricultural labourers, their sex, occupational classification of workers in non-households industry, trade, business, profession or service by class of worker and sex.

• There will be a detailed survey on gender and literacy rate, number of towns, slum households and their population.

• With the huge social and demographic diversity in our country and related challenges, the Census 2027 will also capture caste data electronically in the second phase.

• Information is also collected on sources of potable water, energy, irrigation, method of farming, whether a house is concrete, thatched or others.

• Enumeration of castes will also be done during the second phase of Census.