Census exercise with caste enumeration will be carried out with the reference date of October 1, 2026, in snow-bound areas like Ladakh and of March 1, 2027, in the rest of the country, the Home Ministry announced on Wednesday.
It has been decided to conduct Population Census-2027 in two phases along with the enumeration of castes, it said.
"The reference date for Population Census - 2027 will be 00:00 hours of the first day of March 2027.
"For the Union Territory of Ladakh and the non-synchronous snow-bound areas of the UT of Jammu and Kashmir and states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the reference date will be 00.00 hours of the first day of October 2026," the ministry said in a statement.
The notification for the intent of conducting the Population Census with these reference dates will be published in the official gazette "tentatively on 16.06.2025, as per provision of section 3 of Census Act 1948", it said.
The Census of India is conducted under the provisions of the Census Act, 1948 and the Census Rules, 1990.
The last Census was conducted in 2011 in two phases.
Census 2021 was also proposed to be conducted in two phases with phase I during April-September 2020 and the second phase in February 2021.
All preparations for the first phase of the Census to be conducted in 2021 were completed and the fieldwork was scheduled to begin in some States/UTs from April 1, 2020. However, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic across the country, the census work was postponed.
The government recently decided that it will carry our caste enumeration along with the census.