New Delhi: The Union Home Ministry has announced that India’s next population census, the first since 2011, will be carried out in two phases starting October 1, 2026. This marks the country’s first digital census, allowing people to submit information from their homes through an online system.

The first phase, called the Houselisting Operation, will collect details about housing conditions, household assets, income and amenities available to families. The second phase, the Population Enumeration, is scheduled for March 1, 2027, and will record demographic, socio-economic, cultural and other personal details of every household member. For the first time since Independence, caste details will be officially collected as part of the census, following Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw’s April announcement that caste census would be integrated with the population count.

The timeline for Census 2027 sets the stage for implementing the Women’s Reservation Bill, which reserves one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies for women, and for restarting the delimitation exercise to redraw constituency boundaries based on updated population data. Delimitation has been frozen since 1971 and was extended through the 84th Constitutional Amendment in 2001 until the first census after 2026. The upcoming census will therefore have wide-ranging political and governance implications for the country.

BI Bureau