2027 Census Official Notification Today, Amit Shah Reviews Preparations
The official gazette notification for the long-awaited Census of India is set to be published on Monday, June 16, formally kicking off the process for the massive national exercise. The announcement follows a high-level meeting chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday to review the preparations.
This will be India’s 16th national census and the eighth since independence. Significantly, it will be the first to be conducted digitally and will also include a comprehensive caste enumeration, a long-standing demand from various political quarters.
“Reviewed the preparations for the 16th Census with senior officials. Tomorrow, the gazette notification of the census will be issued,” Shah said in a statement after the meeting, which was attended by the Union Home Secretary and the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India (RG&CCI). “As many as 34 lakh enumerators and supervisors and around 1.3 lakh census functionaries will conduct the operation with cutting-edge mobile digital gadgets,” he added.
The census, scheduled to be completed by March 2027, will be carried out in two distinct phases. The first phase, known as the Houselisting Operation (HLO), will involve collecting data on housing conditions, household assets, and other amenities. The second phase, the Population Enumeration (PE), will gather detailed demographic, socio-economic, and cultural information about every individual.
A landmark feature of this census is the inclusion of caste enumeration, which will provide granular data on India’s social fabric for the first time in a post-independence census.
The entire operation will leverage technology, with data being collected through mobile applications. Citizens will also be given the option of self-enumeration through a dedicated digital platform. Home Minister Shah emphasised that strict data protection protocols will be enforced at every stage of the process, from collection to storage. The scale of the exercise is enormous, requiring the deployment of nearly 34 lakh enumerators and supervisors across the country.
The last census was conducted in 2011. The 2021 census was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic
