India is all set to conduct its first-ever digital census, and for the first time, people will be able to self-enumerate through a special online portal. This new portal will be used in both phases of the Census—the Houselisting and Housing Census (HLO) and the Population Enumeration (PE).
Officials announced on Monday that the portal will be available to citizens across the country and will allow them to fill in their own information digitally. At the same time, government enumerators will collect data using mobile apps on Android and Apple smartphones.
“The Digital Census initiative is a transformational step towards modernising the Census process. For the first time, technology will be used to collect data and send it electronically to the central server. This will result in early availability of Census data,” an official said.
Strict data security measures will be put in place to protect people’s information during collection, transmission, and storage.
Two-phase census starts in 2026
The Census will be carried out in two phases. The first phase, Houselisting Operation, will begin on April 1, 2026, and the second phase, Population Enumeration, will start on February 1, 2027.
Caste details of household members will also be recorded. The reference date for the 2027 Census will be 00:00 hrs of March 1, 2027, and for Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, and snowbound areas of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, it will be October 1, 2026.
This will be India’s 16th census overall and the 8th after independence. A gazette notification about the upcoming census was issued on June 16.
Training, tech, and boundary freezing in progress
To prepare for the massive exercise, the Registrar General of India (RGI) has set up a three-level training system: national trainers, master trainers, and field trainers. These trainers will guide nearly 34 lakh enumerators and supervisors during the process.
States and Union Territories have also been asked to finalise any changes in district or village boundaries by December 31, 2025. Once frozen, those boundaries will be used for the Census.
Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India Mritunjay Kumar Narayan stated in a letter that villages and towns will be divided into uniform enumeration blocks. Each block will have one assigned enumerator to avoid errors like missing or double counting.
According to the rules, the census can only begin three months after boundary limits are frozen.
Starting from April 1, 2026, appointments of supervisors and enumerators will begin, and by February 1, 2027, the main population count will be conducted, bringing India closer to a more accurate and faster data collection system using modern technology.
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