New Delhi: The Union cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Friday approved ₹11,718 crore for conducting Census 2027, which will be critical for planning, policy formulation and effective public administration.
“India’s Census is considered the largest administrative and statistics exercise in the world. It is a very important exercise and the biggest source of primary data for various parameters. The last Census was conducted in 2011 and Census 2021 could not be done due to Covid-19. Today, the cabinet led by PM Modi has approved a budget of ₹11,718 crore for Census-2027,” Union minister for IT, railways and I&B Ashwini Vaishnaw said after the cabinet meeting.
The minister said there will be two phases of Census 2027. “We believe in cooperative federalism and thus, this exercise will be carried out in coordination with the state governments, according to their convenience about the dates,” Vaishnaw said.
“The original estimate for conducting the decadal exercise was actually around ₹12,000 crore only. The last Census in 2011 was conducted at a budget of ₹2,200 crore,” an official familiar with the approval said.
The much-delayed 16th Census, which will include caste enumeration, will be completed by March 1, 2027, in two phases. In phase one, houselisting operations (HLO), data on housing conditions, assets and amenities of each household will be collected from April 1, 2026.
In the second phase, population enumeration (PE), demographic, socio-economic, cultural and other details of every person in each household will be collected from February 1, 2027.
Officials said that while data collection will end by March 1, 2027, the compilation and publication of the data will take two to three years.
A gazette notification announcing the intent to conduct the exercise was issued on June 16.
Since then, the Registrar General of India (RGI) has conducted a pre-test for the Census and issued six circulars to states and Union territories on freezing administrative boundaries.
Vaishnaw said Census 2027 will be the first fully digital exercise, which will enable faster data availability across the country and generate employment for 1.02 crore human-days, with 30 lakh field functionaries involved.
“The current endeavor would be to make available the coming Census data at the shortest possible time across the country. Efforts will also be made to disseminate Census results with more customized visualization tools,” the Press Information Bureau (PIB) said in a a statement issued.
“To complete various tasks for successful conduct of Census 2027, approximately 18,600 technical manpower will be engaged for about 550 days at the local levels. In other words, around 1.02 crore man-days employment would be generated. Further, the provision of technical manpower at charge/district/state level will also result in capacity building as the nature of the job will be related to digital data handling, monitoring and coordination. This will also help in future employment prospects of these persons,” it added.
The government said the use of mobile applications for data collection and a central monitoring portal will ensure better quality data in Census 2027. “Data dissemination will be much better and in a user-friendly way so that all the queries on required parameters for policy making will be made available on the click of a button,” it said.
“Census-as-a-service (CaaS) will deliver data to ministries in a clean, machine-readable and actionable format,” the minister said.
Explaining the process further, the PIB said it will involve visiting every household and canvassing separate questionnaires for houselisting and housing census and for population enumeration.
“The enumerators, generally government teachers and appointed by the state governments, will be doing the field work of Census in addition to their regular duties. Other Census functionaries at sub-district, district and state levels will also be appointed by the state/district administration,” it said.
The Census, the government said, “will have a focused and wider publicity campaign for nationwide awareness, inclusive participation, last-mile engagement and support for field operations. It will emphasize on sharing accurate, authentic and timely information ensuring cohesive & effective outreach effort.”
The cabinet committee on political affairs had, on April 30, decided to include caste enumeration as well. “With the huge social and demographic diversity in our country and related challenges, the Census 2027 will also capture Caste data electronically in second phase, i.e. PE,” it said.
This Census will hold particular significance because its outcomes will form the basis of delimitation — the redrawing of Lok Sabha constituencies — a process expected to be contentious due to long-standing differences between more populous northern states and southern states with low fertility rates.
The 2011 Census covered 640 districts, 7,935 towns and over 600,000 villages.
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