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New Delhi : India is preparing for its first nationwide population census in 16 years, with the house-to-house enumeration exercise scheduled from January 25 to February 28, 2027. The Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India has fixed March 1, 2027, as the official reference date for the exercise.
Ahead of the door-to-door survey, households will have the option to submit their information online through a self-enumeration facility. The digital window will remain open from January 10 to January 24, 2027, giving citizens an opportunity to provide their details in advance. A revision round will subsequently be conducted from March 1 to March 5 to address missing entries and rectify errors.
However, the announced schedule will not cover all regions. Manipur (until further orders), Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Ladakh, and snow-bound non-synchronous areas of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir have been excluded from this phase. Separate schedules have been issued for election-bound states and regions facing challenging winter conditions.
The upcoming census is expected to introduce significant technological changes to India’s traditional population-counting process. Digital enumeration tools, an online self-enumeration portal and geo-referenced mapping systems will be deployed to make data collection more efficient and accurate.
Beyond counting the population, the exercise will gather extensive information on housing conditions, demographics and socio-economic indicators. The data will play a crucial role in shaping government policies, planning welfare programmes and determining the allocation of public resources.
India’s last nationwide census was conducted in 2011, while the 2021 exercise was deferred due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, the 2027 census will provide the country’s first comprehensive demographic assessment in nearly two decades, offering an updated picture of India’s population and changing social and economic landscape.
Provisional population figures are expected to be released in the months following the completion of field enumeration.
