Centre to officialy notify 16th census on Monday; Amit Shah reviews preparations

First census in 16 years to be conducted in two phases; October 1, 2026 set as reference date for snow-bound areas, March 1, 2027 for rest of India.

Home Minister Amit Shah posted on X: Gazette notification for the 16th Census to be issued tomorrow; exercise to include caste enumeration for the first time, with 34 lakh personnel using digital tools for data collection.

NEW DELHI: Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday reviewed the preparation for the forthcoming census with Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan and other senior officials here.

India's 16th census with caste enumeration will be carried out in 2027 with the reference date of October 1, 2026 in snow-bound areas like Ladakh and of March 1, 2027 in the rest of the country.

The notification to conduct the census will be published in official gazette on Monday, an official statement said.

The home minister reviewed the preparation for the forthcoming census with the Union home secretary, Registrar General & Census Commissioner of India Mritunjay Kumar Narayan and other senior officials here, it said.

The census will be conducted in two phases. In phase one i.e. Houselisting Operation (HLO), the housing conditions, assets and amenities of each household will be collected.

Subsequently, in second phase i.e. Population Enumeration (PE), the demographic, socio-economic, cultural and other details of every person in each household will be collected.

In the census, caste enumeration will also be done, the statement said.

For census activities, about 34 lakh enumerators and supervisors and around 1.3 lakh census functionaries would be deployed.

This census is the 16th census since beginning and 8th after Independence, the statement said.

The ensuing census will be conducted through digital means using mobile applications. Provision of self-enumeration would also be made available to the people.

Very stringent data security measures would be kept in place to ensure data security at the time of collection, transmission and storage, the statement said.

The reference date for Population Census - 2027 will be 00:00 hours of the first day of March 2027.

For the Union Territory of Ladakh and the non-synchronous snow-bound areas of the UT of Jammu and Kashmir and states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the reference date will be 00.00 hours of the first day of October 2026.

This census will be carried out after 16 years as the last one was done in 2011.