Union Home Minister Amit Shah reviews preparation for census, official notification tomorrow  

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday reviewed the preparation for the forthcoming census with Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan and other senior officials here.

India's 16th census with caste enumeration will be carried out in 2027 with the reference date of October 1, 2026 in snow-bound areas like Ladakh and of March 1, 2027 in the rest of the country.

The notification to conduct the census will be published in official gazette on Monday, an official statement said.

The home minister reviewed the preparation for the forthcoming census with the Union home secretary, Registrar General & Census Commissioner of India Mritunjay Kumar Narayan and other senior officials here, it said.

The census will be conducted in two phases. In phase one, that is, House Listing Operation (HLO), the housing conditions, assets and amenities of each household will be collected.

Subsequently, in second phase, ie, Population Enumeration (PE), the demographic, socio-economic, cultural and other details of every person in each household will be collected.

In the census, caste enumeration will also be done, the statement said.

For census activities, about 34 lakh enumerators and supervisors and around 1.3 lakh census functionaries would be deployed.

This census is the 16th census since beginning and 8th after Independence, the statement said.

The ensuing census will be conducted through digital means using mobile applications. Provision of self-enumeration would also be made available to the people.

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