Population census from Jan 25 to Feb 28, 2027, reference date March 1

Population enumeration for Census 2027 will be held across the country from January 25 to February 28, 2027, except in Manipur, Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Ladakh and the snow-bound non-synchronous areas of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, according to a notification issued by Registrar General and Census Commissioner Mritunjay Kumar Narayan on Friday.

The reference date for the count will be 00:00 hours of March 1, 2027. A revisional round will run from March 1 to March 5, and the optional self-enumeration window will open on January 10 and close on January 24, immediately before enumerators begin house-to-house visits.

The four poll-bound States of Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and the non-snow-bound areas of Uttarakhand were moved to an earlier schedule by a notification of September 5: self-enumeration from November 16 to 30, enumeration from December 1 to January 4, 2027, a revisional round from January 5 to 9, and a reference date of January 5, 2027. Ladakh and the snow-bound areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand have already been enumerated, in September, against an October 1, 2026 reference date.

Manipur, where census operations were deferred till further orders, figures in neither schedule.

This will be India's first fully digital census, with enumerators recording answers on a mobile app. Forty questions have been notified, with caste among them to be asked during this phase.

The schedule was announced a fortnight after the government amended the Census Rules, 1990, on October 16 to allow "any person" whom a State considers suitable to be appointed an enumerator - a change the Congress has attacked. Party general secretary Jairam Ramesh said on Friday that the Prime Minister and the Home Minister were "orchestrating Census 2027 in a way so as to determine citizenship", calling it "blatantly illegal".

(With inputs from PTI and media reports)