Census 2027: Centre sets January 25–February 28 schedule, Manipur excluded for now

Population enumeration for Census 2027 will be conducted across India, except in poll-bound and specified snow-bound regions, from January 25 to February 28, 2027, according to a notification issued by the Registrar General of India (RGI) and Census Commissioner on October 30.

The reference date for the census will be 00:00 hours on March 1, 2027, the notification issued by Mritunjay Kumar Narayan said.

The exercise will not be conducted during this period in Manipur, until further orders, or in Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Ladakh. The snow-bound non-synchronous areas of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir have also been excluded from the schedule.

A revisional round will be conducted from March 1 to March 5, 2027, the notification said.

The government has also provided an option for self-enumeration from January 10 to January 24, 2027, ahead of the commencement of house-to-house population enumeration.

Assembly elections are scheduled to be held early next year in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur. The Centre had earlier deferred house-listing operations for Census 2027 in Manipur, with the latest notification keeping the state outside the current enumeration schedule until further declaration.

The census, the eighth since Independence, will be conducted in two phases — house listing and housing census, followed by population enumeration. The decennial exercise, originally scheduled for 2021, was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Union Cabinet has approved Rs 11,718 crore for the exercise, which is expected to be the country's biggest-ever headcount.

India's last census was conducted in 2011, when the country's population was recorded at 1.21 billion, comprising 62.32 crore males and 58.75 crore females. The country had 24.95 crore households at the time.