Ministry of Home Affairs issues notification

New Delhi: The Ministry of Home Affairs has issued a notification announcing its intent to conduct the next Population Census in 2027, the first since 2011.

The exercise will be carried out in two phases, with reference dates set for different regions of the country. With the fresh announcement, India’s next full-scale Population Census will now take place after a 16-year gap.

According to the notification released this morning, the reference date for the Population Census will be March 1, 2027, for all States and Union Territories, except for Ladakh and snow-bound areas of Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where the reference date will be October 1, 2026.

“The reference date for the said Census shall be 00:00 hours of March 1, 2027, except for the Union Territory of Ladakh and the snow-bound non-synchronous areas of Jammu & Kashmir and the States of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, for which it shall be 00:00 hours of October 1, 2026,” the  notification stated.

The Census of India is conducted under the Census Act, 1948 and the Census Rules, 1990. The fresh notification supersedes an earlier notification issued in March 2019, which had announced the now-postponed Census 2021.

The last decadal Census was conducted in 2011 in two phases: House Listing Operations (HLO): April to September 2010 and Population Enumeration (PE): February 9 to 28, 2011.

A similar two-phase Census was planned for 2021, with House Listing from April to September 2020 and Population Enumeration in February 2021. Preparations for the first phase had been completed, and fieldwork was scheduled to begin on April 1, 2020, but was indefinitely postponed due to the                    COVID-19 pandemic.