Census 2027 disability count: Rights groups demand full 21-category enumeration
NEW DELHI: Disability rights organisations and activists have raised serious concerns over the framework for enumerating persons with disabilities in Census 2027, arguing that the proposed nine-category classification fails to reflect the legal recognition of 21 disabilities under Indian law.
In a joint statement issued by the National Platform for Rights of Disabled, endorsed by 405 signatories, the groups said the limited categories would not only confuse enumerators but also produce inaccurate data, rendering entire groups of persons with disabilities invisible in official statistics.
The statement demands that the disability questionnaire in Census 2027 should individually capture all 21 disabilities recognised under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, 2016.
According to reports, the Census 2027 will record disability under only nine categories: seeing, hearing, speech, mobility, intellectual disability, mental illness, acid attack, chronic neurological disease and blood disorder. The signatories noted that except for the renaming of “mental retardation” to “intellectual disability,” the first six categories were already used in the 2011 enumeration. The only new additions are acid attack, chronic neurological diseases and blood disorders.
The RPwD Act, 2016 recognises 21 specified disabilities: locomotor disability; leprosy-cured persons; cerebral palsy; dwarfism; muscular dystrophy; acid attack victims; blindness; low vision; deaf; hard of hearing; speech and language disability; intellectual disability; specific learning disabilities; autism spectrum disorder; mental illness; multiple sclerosis; Parkinson’s disease; haemophilia; thalassemia; sickle-cell disease; and multiple disabilities including deafblindness.
The proposed nine-category framework, the groups said, fails to adequately capture this legal and social reality. “It is deplorable that conditions like autism spectrum disorder, specific learning disabilities, dwarfism, leprosy-cured persons and multiple disabilities, including deafblindness, have not been distinctly placed,” the statement reads.
They also pointed out that certain conditions such as cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease are being subsumed under broader categories, while three distinct disabilities — thalassemia, haemophilia and sickle-cell disease — are reduced to a single category of “blood disorder.” This conflation, they argued, would compromise the quality of disability data and hinder targeted policy interventions.
The statement has been endorsed by several prominent organisations, including the Disability Rights Alliance, National Association for the Blind, Politics and Disability Forum, Sense International India, Muskan Foundation, Action for Autism, Autism Society for India and Enable India.
The second phase of Census 2027 population enumeration began on August 17 in select snow-bound regions of Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. This early start is intended to cover remote, mountainous areas before winter sets in. The door-to-door counting for the rest of India is scheduled from September 1 to September 30, 2026.
Disability rights advocates have urged the government to revise the questionnaire before the main enumeration begins, emphasising that accurate data is essential for implementing the RPwD Act and ensuring that no person with disability is left behind.
