Census 2027 Gets Cabinet Nod: India’s First Fully Digital Count to Include Caste Data
Cabinet approves India’s first fully digital Census 2027 with caste enumeration.
The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Friday approved the proposal to conduct the Census of India 2027 at an estimated cost of Rs 11,718.24 crore. Marking the country’s first fully digital census, the exercise is set to be one of the largest administrative operations in the world, covering millions of households across the nation.
Census 2027 will be conducted in two phases. The Houselisting and Housing Census is scheduled from April to September 2026, followed by Population Enumeration in February 2027. In Ladakh and snow-bound areas of Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand, enumeration will begin earlier in September 2026 due to weather constraints.
Nearly 30 lakh field functionaries—including enumerators, supervisors, master trainers, and census officers—will participate in the digital operation. Data will be collected via mobile applications on Android and iOS platforms, supported by the Census Management & Monitoring System (CMMS) portal for real-time tracking, and a Houselisting Block (HLB) Creator tool for digitally mapping enumeration areas.
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For the first time, caste enumeration will be included in the census, approved by the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs in April 2025. The data will be collected electronically during the Population Enumeration phase, significantly expanding the scope of demographic information captured in the country’s most comprehensive population exercise.
Citizens will also have the option to self-enumerate through a secure online platform, with robust security features ensuring the protection of personal information. The census is expected to generate about 1.02 crore man-days of work and employ approximately 18,600 technical personnel for nearly 550 days, boosting digital and data management skills across administrative units.
The government aims to release census data faster than in previous cycles. A new “Census-as-a-Service (CaaS)” platform will provide clean, machine-readable datasets to ministries and agencies, and advanced visualisation tools will make results accessible down to the village and ward levels. Census 2027 will be the 16th national census and the 8th since Independence, remaining India’s most critical source of demographic, social, and economic data.
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