After 16-year wait, countdown begins for Census 2027 in Chandigarh

The countdown to India’s first Census since 2011 has formally begun in the Union Territory of Chandigarh. The Chandigarh Administration has officially notified the schedule for the Census 2027 house listing operations, setting in motion an elaborate ground-level machinery that will fan out across all 35 wards of the city in the coming weeks.

According to the gazette notification issued by the UT Administration, residents will be able to enumerate themselves online from April 16 to April 30 — a first-of-its-kind digital option introduced in this census. This will be followed by the traditional house listing operations from May 1 to May 30.

Deputy Commissioner and Principal Census Officer (PCO) Nishant Kumar Yadav, who shared details of the preparedness plan with The Tribune, said the groundwork was already well advanced. “We have divided the entire UT into 10 census charges, each headed by a senior officer drawn from the DANICS, HCS and PCS cadres,” he said, adding, “A detailed briefing for all charge officers was conducted on February 19. The next round of training is scheduled for March 5 and 6.”

Across its 35 wards, Chandigarh will be carved into approximately 2,125 house listing blocks (HLBs) — compact geographical units of 180 to 200 census houses each, demarcated digitally through a web-mapping application. A total of around 2,341 enumerators and 392 supervisors, drawn from the teaching and government service community, will be deployed for the house listing phase. Every six enumerators will report to one supervisor, forming a supervisory circle.

The 10 charges have been assigned to senior officers spanning the SDM (Central), SDM (East), SDM (South), Director Social Welfare, Director Information Technology, Director Public Relations, Director CTU, District Food and Supply Officer, and both Joint Commissioners of the Municipal Corporation.

Enumerators and supervisors will collect data on 33 parameters using dedicated mobile applications available in Hindi and English on both Android and iOS platforms — replacing paper forms used in earlier censuses.

The questionnaire, notified through a separate gazette notification, will capture details on housing conditions, household composition, access to drinking water, sanitation, cooking fuel and digital assets, including internet access, smartphones and computers. It will also record what cereal a family primarily consumes.

Yadav described the exercise as a logistical challenge of considerable scale requiring coordination across multiple departments. “The Revenue Department will assist with boundary demarcation, the Education Department will provide training venues and a bulk of the field staff, the police will ensure law and order and the Department of Posts will handle logistics,” he said.

“A 24x7 district control room and dedicated WhatsApp groups will be active during operations for real-time coordination and issue resolution,” said the DC.

The entire census chain runs from four Master Trainers at the UT level down through 36 field trainers to over 2,700 enumerators and supervisors. All expenditure incurred will be reimbursed by the Central Government as grant-in-aid.

Punjab Governor and UT Administrator Gulab Chand Kataria has called on all Chandigarh residents to cooperate with census officials. “The census is the foundation on which national policy and public welfare programmes are built. Every household in Chandigarh must participate fully and honestly — the more accurate our count, the better the planning for our people,” he said. Yadav echoed the appeal, underscoring the significance of the long-delayed exercise. “This census will capture who we are as a city in 2026 — our families, our homes, our assets and our needs,” he said. “I urge every resident to open their doors to enumerators and, if they choose, take advantage of the self-enumeration window in April. No one should be left out of the count.”

The self-enumeration portal, a national first, allows residents to fill in their own details digitally before the enumerator visits — reducing fieldwork burden and giving households greater control over their own data.