New Delhi, Mar 30: Registrar General and Census Commissioner Mritunjay Kumar Narayan on Monday announced that Census 2027 will begin its first phase from April 1, 2026, marking the first-ever fully digital census in India with a self-enumeration facility for citizens.
Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Narayan said the census—India’s 16th overall and eighth since Independence—will be conducted in two phases under the provisions of the Census Act 1948. The first phase, House Listing and Housing Census, will be carried out between April and September 2026, with a 15-day self-enumeration window preceding fieldwork. In select states and Union Territories, including Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Goa, Karnataka, Odisha and Sikkim, self-enumeration will be available from April 1 to 15, followed by houselisting from April 16 to May 15.
The second phase, Population Enumeration, will be conducted in February 2027, while snow-bound and remote regions such as Ladakh and parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh will be covered earlier. The reference date for the census will be March 1, 2027. Officials said caste enumeration will also be carried out during the second phase, along with collection of demographic, socio-economic, education, migration and fertility data.
For the first time, enumerators will collect data digitally using mobile applications, while citizens can also complete their details online through a self-enumeration portal available in 16 languages. A centralised system has been developed to monitor field operations in near real time and manage training, deployment and data processing. The government has approved an outlay of ₹11,718.24 crore for the exercise, covering training, IT infrastructure, logistics and honorarium for personnel.
Narayan said extensive preparations have been undertaken, including a nationwide pre-test in November 2025 across about 5,000 blocks. Over 31 lakh enumerators and supervisors are being trained through a multi-tier system involving national, master and field trainers. The census will cover all administrative units across 36 states and Union Territories, including over 6.39 lakh villages and thousands of towns, with administrative boundaries frozen between January 2026 and March 2027 to ensure smooth conduct of the exercise.
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