Census 2027: Enumeration from January 25 to February 28; poll-bound and snow-bound areas excluded
Population enumeration for India's 2027 Census will be carried out across most of the country between January 25 and February 28, 2027, the government announced on Friday, with poll-bound states and snow-bound regions left out of the main schedule.
According to a notification issued by Mritunjay Kumar Narayan, Registrar General of India and Census Commissioner, the reference date for the census will be midnight on March 1, 2027.
The enumeration will not be conducted during this window in Manipur, Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Ladakh, nor in the snow-bound, non-synchronous areas of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. A separate schedule will be announced for Manipur at a later date.
A revisional round has been scheduled from March 1 to March 5, 2027, during which households missed in the main count can be covered. Ahead of the house-to-house exercise, the government will offer a self-enumeration option from January 10 to January 24, allowing residents to submit their details themselves.
The exclusions come as Assembly elections are due in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur in early 2027. The census is the country's largest administrative exercise, and its schedule has in the past been adjusted around major electoral events and difficult terrain.
The 2027 Census, the eighth since Independence, will be conducted in two phases: the house-listing and housing census, followed by population enumeration. The decennial exercise was originally scheduled for 2021 but was postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Union Cabinet has approved Rs 11,718 crore for conducting the census.
Last month, the Registrar General of India announced that house-listing operations for Census 2027 in Manipur had been deferred. The state has seen prolonged disruption since violence broke out in 2023, and official exercises there have been staggered accordingly.
A census is a nationwide exercise to collect, compile and analyse information about a population and its demographic, social and economic characteristics. The data gives the government a detailed picture of the country's population, living conditions and access to basic amenities, and underpins planning, welfare scheme targeting and the delimitation of electoral constituencies.
The government has said that information collected during the census will remain confidential and will be used only for statistical purposes. Enumerators are bound by law not to disclose individual responses.
India's last census was conducted in 2011, when the country's population stood at 1.21 billion, comprising 62.32 crore males and 58.75 crore females. The country had 24.95 crore households at the time. The 2027 exercise will be the first full census since then, and the first to offer self-enumeration, a step aimed at improving coverage in urban areas and among residents who are difficult to reach at home.
