Census 2027 to be India's first fully digital headcount: Here's how it will be conducted

Census 2027 will be India’s first fully digital headcount, powered by the Census Management and Monitoring System (CMMS), a dedicated web-based platform designed to manage one of the world’s largest administrative exercises.

The shift replaces manual records with handheld devices, geotagged mapping tools and a centralised command platform.

3.2 million to be on the field

At the core of the operation will be 3.2 million field functionaries, enumerators and supervisors, who will capture granular demographic, social and economic data from hundreds of millions of households using handheld devices. The data will be transmitted, aggregated and validated through the CMMS architecture, significantly reducing the time required for compilation and error correction.

“The ensuing Census 2027 will make extensive use of digital technology to enhance the quality, efficiency, and timeliness of data collection and dissemination. In the forthcoming Census, data will be collected through digital mode, marking a significant and transformative step towards the modernisation of the Census process,” Registrar General of India Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan said in a circular addressed to Chief Secretaries of all states and Union Territories.

What CMMS will manage?

According to the circular, the CMMS will facilitate end-to-end management of Census operations. This includes creating users at various levels, handling training modules, creating housing listing blocks (HLB) and supervisory circles, allocating enumerators and supervisors, and generating appointment letters and ID cards.

The system will also enable role-based access control for appointments, training and near-real-time monitoring of field operations.

A web-based mapping application will support geo-tagging of housing blocks, integrating spatial data with demographic enumeration. Officials said the digital mapping tools will help delineate boundaries with greater precision, reducing overlaps and omissions.

Geo-tagging is expected to strengthen data integrity while creating a long-term digital spatial archive useful for planning, disaster management and infrastructure development.

Budget, timeline and scope

The Union Cabinet has approved Rs 11,718 crore for Census 2027, which will include caste enumeration for the first time. The exercise will be the 16th Census since Independence and will offer citizens the option of self-enumeration.

Originally scheduled for 2021, the decadal exercise was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Census will be conducted in two phases: house listing and housing census, from April to September 2026, followed by population enumeration in February 2027.

The Registrar General of India has listed 33 questions for the first phase, which will systematically record all structures, houses and households to build the framework for population enumeration.

How enumeration blocks will work

To ensure equitable distribution of work, villages and urban wards will be divided into clearly demarcated blocks with mapped boundaries.

“Such blocks created for HLO and population enumeration (PE) are called houselisting blocks (HLBs) and enumeration blocks (EBs), respectively. The HLBs/EBs would ultimately be the smallest administrative unit for conducting the Census and would form the basis for processing of data after the field operations are over,” another circular issued by RGI Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan recently said.

An HLB will typically cover a residential population of 700–800. In sparsely populated non-residential areas, one HLB may be formed by taking 300 or more Census houses.

“For the first time, the creation and demarcation of HLBs, formation of SC and allocation of enumerators and supervisors for the HLBs and SCs will be carried out through the Census Monitoring and Management System (CMMS) portal and HLB Census of India 2027- Circular No. 10 Page 5 of 12 Creator (HLBC) Web Mapping Application, respectively,” the circular said.

(WIth inputs from PTI)