For the first time, the Census in India will be conducted digitally, and the option of self-enumeration will also be available, Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India Mritunjay Kumar Narayan said on Monday.
Addressing a press conference on Census 2027 in New Delhi, Narayan said the world’s largest census will be conducted in two phases, with the first phase beginning on 1 April 2026.
“The Union government has approved an outlay of Rs 11,718.24 crore for Census 2027, making adequate provisions for payment of honorarium and training to Census functionaries, IT infrastructures, logistics, etc,” Narayan said.
More than three million enumerators, supervisors, and other officials will be involved in Census 2027 nationwide.
“Self-enumeration from 1st to 15th April and House Listing and Housing Census from 16th April to 15th May 2026 will be conducted in Andaman & Nicobar Islands, NDMC and Delhi Cantonment Board, Goa, Karnataka, Lakshadweep, Mizoram, Odisha, and Sikkim,” he said.
Narayan said Census 2027 will be conducted in two phases. Phase I, the House Listing and Housing Census (HLO), will be conducted over six months, from April to September 2026. Each state and Union Territory will conduct the exercise over a 30-day period at its convenience, preceded by a 15-day self-enumeration window.
“In this phase, information about the condition of houses, amenities available to the household and assets possessed by the household will be collected. Questions of Phase I of the Census have been notified in January 2026,” he said.
Phase II — Population Enumeration (PE) — will be conducted in February 2027. In the UT of Ladakh and snow-bound non-synchronous areas of the UT of Jammu and Kashmir, and the states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, Phase II will be conducted in September 2026.
As decided by the CCPA, caste enumeration will also be carried out during the second phase of the Census. In Phase II, information on demographic, socio-economic, educational, migration and fertility aspects will be collected from each individual. The exact dates for population enumeration and the questions to be covered in this phase will be notified in due course.
States, namely Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Delhi (New Delhi Municipal Council and Delhi Cantonment Board), Goa, Karnataka, Lakshadweep, Mizoram, Odisha, and Sikkim, will do the Houselisting and Housing Census from 16th April to 15th May, 2026, along with a 15-day self-enumeration period from 1st April to 15th April, 2026.
Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, and Haryana will begin Houselisting Census from 1st May to 30th May with self-enumeration period from 16th April to 30th April, 2026.
Census 2027 will be conducted through digital means. Enumerators will collect and submit data directly via a mobile application using their smartphones. In addition, an online provision for self-enumeration will be available in both phases. The mobile application and self-enumeration portal will be accessible in 16 languages, including Hindi and English.
A portal has been developed for management and monitoring of various Census-related field activities like generation of appointment letters and ID cards of enumerators and supervisors, allocation of work to them, management of training to census functionaries, HLB creation, monitoring of the progress of work through a dashboard on a near-real-time basis, auto-generation of some Census Records/ Abstracts, etc. Houselisting Blocks (HLBs) will be carved out using a web mapping application. Necessary measures are in place to ensure data security.
For self-enumeration, respondents can log into the SE portal using their mobile number and other basic details to complete the Census schedule at their convenience. Upon successful submission, a unique Self-Enumeration ID (SE ID) will be generated, which must be shared with the enumerator during the field visit.
The self-enumeration option allows respondents to provide their information at their convenience before the enumerator’s visit. While enumerators will continue house-to-house enumeration in their allocated blocks, as in previous Censuses, self-enumeration is an additional facility being offered this time.
A pre-test of the first phase of the Census (HLO), i.e. a full rehearsal of the entire census methodology, including the appointment and trainings of the field functionaries and other officials of the state, questionnaire, relevant apps and portals and all other related activities from data collection to data processing was conducted in all States/UTs in November, 2025 in about 5,000 blocks.
All the administrative units have been frozen for the period 01.01.2026 to 31.03.2027. Census 2027 will be conducted in 36 States/UTs, 7,092 sub-districts, 5,128 Statutory towns, 4,580 Census towns and around 6,39,902 villages, as on 01.01.2026.
Elaborate arrangements have been made for the training of Census functionaries. As many as 100 National Trainers have been trained by subject-matter experts, who in turn have trained about 2,000 Master Trainers. These Master Trainers are training about 45,000 Field Trainers, who will further train about 31 lakh Enumerators and Supervisors in about 80,000 batches. Training materials have been prepared in regional languages to ensure that Enumerators and Supervisors at the last mile do not face difficulties in collecting quality data in a timely manner.
The Census of India is conducted under the provisions of the Census Act, 1948, Census Rules, 1990, as amended from time to time. The last Census of India was conducted in 2011. Census 2027 will be the 16th in the series and the 8th since independence.
The government’s intent to conduct the Population Census 2027 was notified in the Gazette of India on 16 June, 2025. The reference date for Census 2027 is 00:00 hours of 1 March 2027. For the UT of Ladakh and snow-bound non-synchronous areas of the UT of Jammu and Kashmir, and the states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, the reference date will be 00:00 hours on 1 October 2026.