Cabinet approves Census 2027 at cost of Rs 11,700 crore, enumeration to happen in 2 phases

Cabinet approves Census of India 2027 plan costing Rs 11,718.24 crore; house listing in 2026, population count in 2027; caste data in Phase 2.

The Union Cabinet on December 12, 2025 approved the conduct of the Census of India 2027 at a cost of Rs 11,718.24 crore, clearing the country’s largest administrative and statistical exercise after a prolonged gap.

The census will be conducted in two phases. Houselisting and Housing Census will run from April to September 2026, followed by Population Enumeration (PE) in February 2027. For Ladakh and snow-bound, non-synchronous areas of Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, PE will be conducted in September 2026, the government said.

Census 2027 will be India’s first fully digital census, with data collection through mobile applications on Android and iOS. A dedicated Census Management & Monitoring System (CMMS) will track operations in real time, while a Houselisting Block (HLB) Creator web-map tool will support field supervision. The public will also have an option to self-enumerate.

The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs had decided on April 30, 2025 to include caste enumeration. Accordingly, caste data will be captured electronically during Population Enumeration, the second phase.

About 30 lakh field functionaries—including enumerators, supervisors, trainers and census officers—will be deployed by state and district administrations. Enumerators, typically government teachers, will carry out census duties alongside regular work and be paid an honorarium.

The government said Census-as-a-Service (CaaS) will deliver outputs to ministries in clean, machine-readable and actionable formats, with improved dissemination and customized visualisation down to village/ward level to support policymaking.

Beyond enumeration, the exercise will engage around 18,600 technical personnel for roughly 550 days, generating about 1.02 crore man-days of employment. Officials said the digital focus is expected to build skills in data handling and monitoring.

Context:Census 2027 will be the 16th census since the first count and the 8th after Independence, conducted under the Census Act, 1948 and Census Rules, 1990.