In a first, citizens will be able to self-enumerate during upcoming census

A special dedicated web portal will be launched for self-enumeration during the upcoming census, which will be available for both phases of the national enumeration exercise, officials said Monday.

In the country's first digital census, enumerators will collect the data of citizens using mobile applications on their Android and Apple phones, they said.

It will also be the first time in the country that citizens will get a chance to self-enumerate through a dedicated web portal which will be available for both the phases of Census - Houselisting and Housing Census (HLO) and Population Enumeration.

"Digital Census initiative is a transformational step towards modernising the Census process. For the first time, technology will be used to collect data and send it electronically to the central server. This will result in early availability of Census data," an official said.

Very stringent data security measures would be kept in place to ensure data security at the time of collection, transmission and storage.

HLO will start from April 1, 2026 followed by phase 2 starting on February 1, 2027 in which Population Enumeration (PE) will be conducted. Castes of household members will be enumerated in the ensuing Census.

Reference date for the Census 2027 will be 00:00 hrs of March 1, 2027 and 00:00 hrs of October 1, 2026 for Union Territories of Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir and snowbound non-synchronous areas of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

It will be the 16th Census since start of the exercise in the country and 8th after Independence, for which a gazette notification was issued on June 16.

The Registrar General of India has put in place a three-tier focused and need-based training for each phase--national trainer, master trainer and field trainer.

The field trainers will train around 34 lakh enumerators and supervisors for the massive exercise.

The RGI has told states and Union Territories to make any proposed changes in the boundaries of administrative units before December 31, when they will be considered final for the Census exercise.

In a letter to all states and Union Territories, Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India Mritunjay Kumar Narayan had said that for the Census, all villages and towns are divided into uniform enumeration blocks and for each block, an enumerator is assigned to avoid any miss or repetition during the population count.

According to norms, the Census can be conducted only three months after the freezing of boundary limits of administrative units such as districts, sub-districts, tehsils, talukas and police stations.

Narayan had said that from April 1, 2026, the Houselisting Operation, the appointment of supervisors and enumerators and the work division among them will be done, and on February 1, 2027, the Census of the population will begin.