India’s population enumeration for Census 2027 will take place across most parts of the country from January 25 to February 28, 2027, with self-enumeration scheduled from January 10 to 24, according to a notification issued by the Union Home Ministry on Friday.
The population enumeration is the second phase of Census 2027. A revision round will follow from March 1 to March 5, 2027. The schedule will apply to most parts of the country, while separate timelines have been announced for snow-bound regions and states preparing for Assembly elections.
Self-enumeration will open on January 10 and remain available until January 24. During this period, residents will be able to provide their details through the designated self-enumeration process before the house-to-house population enumeration begins.
The population enumeration in snow-bound areas of Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh was scheduled earlier, from September 1 to September 30. The Home Ministry had also previously announced that non-snow-bound areas of Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand would undergo the process from December 1 to January 4 because of the forthcoming Assembly elections.
The government has already released the 40 questions that will be asked during the population enumeration. The list includes a question on caste, making Census 2027 the first census in independent India to provide for caste enumeration alongside the population count, according to the report.
The questionnaire is larger than the one used in the 2011 Census, which contained 29 questions. The new list includes questions and fields relating to the place where a person received a Covid-19 vaccination, the number of bank accounts, digital literacy, declared nationality, the name and mobile number of a spouse, Aadhaar details, voter identity card details and passport information, where available.
The expanded schedule and questionnaire will create a large administrative exercise for governments and census workers across urban and rural areas. For cities, the population count will establish an updated official record of households and residents after the gap since the 2011 Census, although the notification itself does not set out how the resulting data will later be used for specific urban programmes or infrastructure decisions.
The inclusion of caste and additional household-level information also marks a significant expansion in the range of data being collected. The exact procedures for collecting, processing and publishing each category of information were not detailed in the supplied report.
The next operational milestone is the start of self-enumeration on January 10, 2027, followed by the main population enumeration from January 25 to February 28 and the revision round from March 1 to March 5.
