NEW DELHI: India’s first digital Census, which will for the first time include caste enumeration beyond Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), will enter its final major phase on January 10, 2027, with the launch of a self-enumeration facility. It will be followed by a door-to-door population count from January 25 to February 28, according to a notification issued by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
Enumerators will collect information through a 40-question questionnaire, including 13 new questions covering caste, religion, nationality, digital literacy, banking details and personal identification documents.
The exercise will also seek details such as the place and date of birth of both parents, spouse’s name, permanent residential address, place of Covid-19 vaccination, passport number and availability of a driving licence. Respondents will also be asked to provide their mobile, Aadhaar and voter ID numbers, if available.
The exercise will, however, begin earlier in four poll-bound states—Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Uttarakhand and Punjab—where self-enumeration will be available from November 16, 2026, to January 5, 2027. Door-to-door population enumeration in these states will commence on December 1.
The MHA notification, issued through Registrar General of India and Census Commissioner Mritunjay Kumar Narayan, has specified January 25 to February 28 as the period for the nationwide population enumeration, followed by a revisional round from March 1 to 5, 2027. The self-enumeration window will run from January 10 to 24.
The notification fixes midnight of March 1, 2027, as the reference date for the Census and has been issued under Section 3 of the Census Act, 1948, read with Rules 6A and 6D of the Census Rules, 1990.
The population enumeration has already been completed in Ladakh and the snow-bound areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand on September 30. The exercise remains deferred indefinitely in violence-affected Manipur.
The first phase, comprising House Listing Operations (HLO), began on April 1, 2026, and was completed across the country by September 30, barring Manipur.
The first notification for Census 2027 was issued on June 16, 2025, announcing February 2027 as the proposed period for the population count, with an exception for Ladakh and snow-bound regions.
