The Crossbill News Desk
After years of delay, the Union government on Friday (December 12) cleared the way for India’s next decadal census, with the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approving the exercise at an estimated cost of Rs 11,718.24 crore.
With these timelines, the gap between the first phase of the 2011 census and that of the forthcoming exercise will extend to an unprecedented 15 years.
According to the Cabinet, around 30 lakh ‘field functionaries’ will be deployed to carry out the enumeration, which will be India’s first census to be conducted entirely through digital means. Data will be collected using mobile applications available on Android and iOS app marketplaces, while a ‘Census Management & Monitoring System portal’ has been developed to supervise the process in real time.
The move towards a fully digital census has, however, raised concerns about data safety and privacy. Addressing this briefly, the Cabinet’s communiqué on Friday stated that “suitable security features have been provisioned for this mammoth digital operation”.
The Cabinet also reiterated that caste details will be collected electronically during the second phase of the census, the population enumeration phase, as announced earlier in April.
To support the digital exercise, the government said 18,600 technical personnel “will be engaged for about 550 days at the local levels”, creating nearly 1.02 crore person-days of employment.
The experience, the Cabinet added, would aid the “future employment prospects of these persons” as the work would involve “digital data handling, monitoring and coordination”.
Notably, Friday’s press release made no mention of a separate budgetary allocation for the National Population Register (NPR), which is the first step towards a nationwide National Register of Citizens. This marks a departure from 2019, when the government had earmarked Rs 3,941.35 crore for the NPR, as noted by The Hindu.
Originally due in 2020, the 16th decadal census was first postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequently delayed for reasons that were not publicly explained. The first phase of the upcoming exercise — the houselisting and housing census — is scheduled to be conducted between April and September 2026.
The second phase, population enumeration, will be held in February 2027 across most of the country. In Ladakh and the ‘snow-bound non-synchronous areas’ of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, however, this phase will be carried out earlier, in September 2026.
With these timelines, the gap between the first phase of the 2011 census and that of the forthcoming exercise will extend to an unprecedented 15 years.
According to the Cabinet, around 30 lakh ‘field functionaries’ will be deployed to carry out the enumeration, which will be India’s first census to be conducted entirely through digital means. Data will be collected using mobile applications available on Android and iOS app marketplaces, while a ‘Census Management & Monitoring System portal’ has been developed to supervise the process in real time.
The move towards a fully digital census has, however, raised concerns about data safety and privacy. Addressing this briefly, the Cabinet’s communiqué on Friday stated that “suitable security features have been provisioned for this mammoth digital operation”.
The Cabinet also reiterated that caste details will be collected electronically during the second phase of the census, the population enumeration phase, as announced earlier in April.
To support the digital exercise, the government said 18,600 technical personnel “will be engaged for about 550 days at the local levels”, creating nearly 1.02 crore person-days of employment.
The experience, the Cabinet added, would aid the “future employment prospects of these persons” as the work would involve “digital data handling, monitoring and coordination”.
Notably, Friday’s press release made no mention of a separate budgetary allocation for the National Population Register (NPR), which is the first step towards a nationwide National Register of Citizens. This marks a departure from 2019, when the government had earmarked Rs 3,941.35 crore for the NPR, as noted by The Hindu.
Originally due in 2020, the 16th decadal census was first postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequently delayed for reasons that were not publicly explained. The first phase of the upcoming exercise — the houselisting and housing census — is scheduled to be conducted between April and September 2026.
The second phase, population enumeration, will be held in February 2027 across most of the country. In Ladakh and the ‘snow-bound non-synchronous areas’ of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, however, this phase will be carried out earlier, in September 2026.
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