Highlighting that India is at a crucial “data inflection point,” Atal Dulloo on Friday said that the upcoming Census 2027 is not merely an enumeration exercise, but a national digital transformation mission that will lay the bedrock for a ‘Viksit Bharat’ and evidence-based policy planning.
The Chief Secretary made these remarks while addressing the Census 2027 Summit here.
The summit was attended by senior administrators, development partners, and policy experts to deliberate on the roadmap, preparedness, and significance of the Census of India 2027, the country’s first-ever fully digital and paperless census exercise.
Among those present were Amit Sharma, Chief Principal Census Officer and Director of Census Operations, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh; Andrea M. Wojnar, Resident Representative of UNFPA India; Praful Kumar Sigtia, Deputy Director General (Information Security), UIDAI; and Rohit Kumar, Co-Chair (Policy Making), G20.
Delivering the keynote address as the chief guest, Dulloo observed that India is entering a new era of governance driven by technology and real-time insights. Contrasting the upcoming exercise with the manual and time-consuming 2011 Census, he emphasised a paradigm shift towards a technology-first, citizen-centric framework utilising mobile-based enumeration, artificial intelligence, and cloud technology to ensure accuracy, transparency, and speed.
Speaking on rapid global technological advancements, he stressed that data will be the key driver—the “oil and fuel”—of any nation’s economy in the AI-driven future. He noted that India’s vast demographic diversity offers a richer dataset compared to Western nations, giving the country a strategic advantage in training AI systems and emerging as a globally benchmarked data-driven nation.
He further highlighted that census data plays a pivotal role in determining the financial share of States and Union Territories and in guiding development initiatives for the next decade.
Earlier, in his welcome address, Sharma outlined the two-phase structure of Census 2027. The first phase will cover House Listing and Housing Census (HLO), including a self-enumeration period from May 17 to May 31, 2026, followed by house-to-house fieldwork from June 1 to June 30, 2026. The second phase will focus on Population Enumeration (PE), commencing in September 2026 for snow-bound areas and in February 2027 for non-snowbound regions.
A secure web portal, available in 16 languages, will enable citizens to submit their details online before door-to-door surveys begin.
Speaking on the occasion, Wojnar said that similar census practices anchored in digital technology and self-enumeration are being adopted globally. She expressed confidence that Census 2027 will be a robust and comprehensive exercise in India as well.