The Union Government has issued the notification for the first phase of the Census of India 2027, marking the commencement of house listing and housing census operations across all States and Union Territories. As per the notification issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs, house listing activities will be carried out between April 1 and September 30, 2026, during a 30-day period to be specified by each State or Union Territory. The notification also provides for self-enumeration, which will be available for a period of 15 days prior to the start of house-to-house listing, in accordance with schedules notified by the respective States and Union Territories.
The Census of India 2027 will be conducted in two phases and will be the first fully digital census in the country, with data collection carried out through mobile applications available on both Android and iOS platforms. Around 30 lakh field functionaries, including enumerators, supervisors, trainers and census officers, will be deployed for data collection, monitoring and supervision. The first phase will cover houselisting and housing census from April to September 2026, while the second phase of population enumeration will be conducted in February 2027. For the Union Territory of Ladakh and snow-bound, non-synchronous areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, population enumeration will be undertaken in September 2026. Earlier, the Union Cabinet had approved the conduct of Census 2027 with an estimated cost of Rs. 11,718.24 crore, and the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs had also decided to include caste enumeration in the upcoming census.
