New Delhi: The Union home ministry Wednesday formally notified the timeline for the first phase of Census 2027 — involving housing and houselisting operations — declaring that it shall be conducted over a 30-day period, to be specified by each state or Union territory, between April 1 and Sept 30 this year. Invoking its powers under Sections 3 and 17A of the Census Act, 1948, read with 6A and 6D of Census Rules, 1990, and in supersession of the notification dated Jan 7, 2020, “except as respects things done or omitted to be done before such supersession”, the Centre declared in the notification that the houselisting operations of Census 2027 shall have an option for self-enumeration, “which shall be conducted in 15 days’ time just before the start of house-to-house houselisting operations of 30 days”.Census to be held digitally for first timeThe release of schedule for first phase of the exercise formally kickstarts what was a decennial exercise, before the Covid outbreak delayed Census 2021. It shall be conducted in two phases – houselisting and housing census followed by population enumeration – between April 1, 2026 and Feb 28, 2027, with 00:00 hours of March 1, 2027, as the reference date (except for UT of Ladakh and snow-bound areas and non-synchronous areas of J&K, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand).On Dec 12 last year, the Union cabinet chaired by PM Modi had approved the proposal for conducting Census of India 2027 at a cost of Rs 11,718.2 crore. The population enumeration phase of the latest census will also capture caste identity.About 30 lakh field functionaries will be involved in the Census, the largest administrative and statistical exercise in the world. Being the first digital census, it will involve the use of mobile app for data collection and a central portal for monitoring purposes, ensuring better quality data.The govt had last month stated that Census data dissemination will be much better and done in a user-friendly way so that all queries on required parameters for policymaking are available at the click of a button.Census-as-a-service (CaaS) will deliver data to ministries in a clean, machine-readable and actionable format.The Census process involves visiting each and every household and canvassing separate questionnaires for houselisting & housing census and population enumeration.The enumerators, generally government teachers and appointed by state govts, will do the Census fieldwork in addition to their regular duties.A dedicated portal, namely Census Management & Monitoring System (CMMS) portal, has been developed for managing and monitoring the entire process on a real-time basis. Public can self-enumerate through the Census app or portal in the 15-day period before start of the 30-day houselisting phase in their state/UT. Suitable security features have been provisioned for the digital census.About the AuthorBharti JainBharti Jain is senior editor with The Times of India, New Delhi. She has been writing on security matters since 1996. Having covered the Union home ministry, security agencies, Election Commission and the ‘prime’ political beat, the Congress, for The Economic Times all these years, she moved to TOI in August 2012. 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New Delhi: The Union home ministry Wednesday formally notified the timeline for the first phase of Census 2027 — involving housing and houselisting operations — declaring that it shall be conducted over a 30-day period, to be specified by each state or Union territory, between April 1 and Sept 30 this year. Invoking its powers…
