Census to be held in 2 phases between April 2026 & Feb 2027, govt tells Parliament

The Census exercise for 2027 will be conducted in two phases, with the first phase to be held between April and September 2026, while the second round in February 2027, the government informed the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

Giving details of the exercise in response to a question by Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai said the two phases would be — Phase I: House Listing and Housing Census followed by Phase II: Population Enumeration. The first phase from April to September 2026 will be conducted in a period of 30 days in accordance with the convenience of state governments.

"Population Enumeration will be done in February 2027 with reference date 00:00 hours of 1st March, 2027, except for the union territory of Ladakh and snow-bound non-synchronous areas of the UT of Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where it will be done in September, 2026 with reference date 00.00 hours of 1st October, 2026," he said.

Rai said in response to Rahul's unstarred question that the census questionnaire was finalised on the basis of inputs and suggestions from different ministries, departments, organisations and census data users before each exercise.

The junior minister said the census has a history of more than 150 years and learnings from previous exercises are taken into consideration for conducting the next census.

Responding to a separate question, Rai said caste enumeration will also be done in the census as decided by the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs on April 30 this year.

In another response, the minister said that census 2027 will be conducted through digital means in which data will be collected through mobile apps along with online provision for self-enumeration.