Rs 11,718 cr sanctioned, 30 lakh enumerators to be involved
New Delhi, Dec 12: The Union Cabinet on Friday approved Rs 11,718 crore for conducting the 2027 Census, which for the first time will include caste enumeration. Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, cleared the proposal for what will be the first-ever digital Census.
About 30 lakh enumerators will participate in the exercise, which will also offer self-enumeration options. The 2021 Census, postponed due to COVID-19, will now be held in two phases: house-listing and housing census from April–September 2026, followed by population enumeration (PE) in February 2027. For Ladakh and snow-bound regions of J&K, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, PE will take place in September 2026.
Vaishnaw said a robust digital system will ensure data protection, with personal details kept confidential while macro-level data is released. The exercise will generate 1.02 crore human days of employment, including about 18,600 technical personnel deployed for 550 days at local levels. Their work in digital handling and monitoring is expected to aid future employment prospects.
Enumerators will use a mobile application (Android and iOS) to collect data, while a central portal will facilitate real-time monitoring. A dedicated Census Management & Monitoring System (CMMS) has been created for end-to-end oversight. Another feature, the Houselisting Block (HLB) creator web map application, will support field officers during the houselisting phase.
The Census will electronically capture caste data during the PE phase. The government said the digital approach will ensure faster data dissemination with improved accuracy and enable access to information at the village/ward level. The initiative also introduces Census-as-a-Service (CaaS) to provide ministries with machine-readable, actionable datasets.
As the world’s largest administrative and statistical exercise, the Census remains the primary source of micro-level data on housing conditions, amenities, demography, religion, SC/ST, language, literacy, migration, fertility, and more. The last full caste-based Census was conducted by the British between 1881 and 1931. After Independence, caste was excluded from decadal Census operations.
The decision to restore caste enumeration was taken by the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs on April 30. In 2010, the UPA government had considered a caste Census but ultimately conducted the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) instead.
India’s population in the 2011 Census stood at 1.21 billion, with males comprising 51.54% and females 48.46%.
