Shah unveils mascots as countdown for census 2027 begins
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday soft-launched four digital tools and formally unveiled the mascots, Pragati and Vikas, for census 2027. “The mascots symbolise equal participation of women and men in fulfilling the resolve to make India a developed nation by 2047. Through these mascots, information, objectives and key messages related to Census-2027 will be disseminated in an effective and citizen-friendly manner across diverse sections of society,” a Government statement read.
The 16th census will also include caste enumeration. The first phase of one of the largest administrative exercises in the world, the Census of India 2027, will start on April 1, 2026. The entire exercise is expected to cost `11,718 crore. Originally scheduled for 2021, the decadal exercise was not conducted due to the COVID19 pandemic.
It will be conducted in two phases. Houselisting and housing census will be conducted from April to September 2026, and population enumeration (PE) will be held in February 2027.
Shah launched the Houselisting Block Creator (HLBC) web application for digital mapping using satellite imagery, which will ensure standardised geographic coverage across the country; the HLO mobile application, which is a secure offline mobile app for enumerators to collect and upload houselisting data; a Self-Enumeration (SE) portal, which will allow users to submit their household information online before field operations; and the Census Management and Monitoring System (CMMS).
All the four applications have been developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing.
The self-enumeration option will be available for a 15-day window preceding the 30-day houselisting and housing census.
At the heart of the exercise will be the CMMS a dedicated portal engineered to orchestrate one of the largest administrative exercises in the world. “The CMMS is a centralised, web-based digital platform designed to plan, manage, execute and monitor all census-related activities across administrative levels. Officers at sub-district, district and State levels can track enumeration progress, field performance and operational readiness in real-time through an integrated dashboard,” the statement further read.
The bespoke software backbone, designed to monitor the exercise in near real time, will allow 3.2 million field functionaries enumerators and supervisors to capture granular demographic, social and economic data from hundreds of millions of households using handheld devices.
