Process underway to finalise questionnaire for Census 2027: MHA in Parliament

THe power of the recorder superior general and nose count commissioner of bharat (ORGI) is in the process of finalising the questionnaire for the Census 2027, the Union ministry of home affairs (MHA informed the Parliament on Tuesday.Responding to a question by member of parliament Shatrughan Sinha, Union minister of state for home Nityanand Rai said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha: “As per Rule 6 of Census Rules, 1990, the census questionnaires or schedules are notified by the central government through official gazette under sub-section (1) of section 8 of the act. The office of the registrar general and census commissioner is in the process of finalising the questionnaire.”The timeline for the Census 2027, Rai said, has been kept the same “like the past practices followed in previous censuses”.The minister also said in his reply that caste enumeration will be done in the Census 2027, as decided by the cabinet committee on political affairs on April 30.On Sinha’s query whether disclosing caste for the census would be optional, Rai said “the respondent is required to answer questions to the best of his knowledge or belief”.In a separate response to Congress MP Rahul Gandhi’s query on Census, Rai said the exercise will be conducted in two phases, first between April and September 2026 and the second in February 2027.“The two phases will be - Phase I-House Listing and Housing Census followed by Phase II–Population Enumeration (PE). The first phase from April to September 2026 will be conducted in a period of 30 days in accordance with the convenience of state/UT 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 union territory of Jammu and Kashmir and the states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where it will be done in September, 2026 with reference date 00.00 hours of 1st October, 2026”.The pre-test for the first phase of Census 2027 has already been conducted from November 10 to November 30.The much-delayed Census, which will include caste enumeration, will be completed by March 1, 2027. Officials have said that while the data collection would be over by March 1, 2027, the entire exercise to collate the data and publish it will take two to three years.The MHA has said that the 16th Census will see involvement of about 3.4 million enumerators and supervisors.It also said that the upcoming census “will be conducted through digital means using mobile applications” and “provision of self-enumeration would also be made available to the people”.The Census, which was to happen originally in 2021, had earlier done a pre-test for Census 2021, in 2019 in all 36 states/UTs across 76 districts in 90 areas (54 rural and 36 urban) covering a population of 26 lakh, in which around 6,000 enumerators and 1,100 supervisors from respective states/UTs were involved in data collection and supervision.