New Delhi, 16 June

The government on Monday issued a notification for conducting India's 16th census with caste enumeration in 2027, 16 years after the last such exercise in 2011.

The census will be carried out with a reference date of 1 October, 2026 in snow-bound areas like Ladakh and 1 March, 2027 in the rest of the country, the notification said.

"The reference date for the said census shall be 00.00 hours of the 1st day of March, 2027, except for the Union territory of Ladakh and snow-bound non-synchronous areas of the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir and the States of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand," it said.

In respect of Ladakh and snow-bound non-synchronous areas of the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir and the states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the reference date shall be 00:00 hours of the 1st day of October, 2026, it said.

The massive exercise to give population-related data from across the country will be done by about 34 lakh enumerators and supervisors and around 1.3 lakh census functionaries armed with digital devices.

In the census, caste enumeration will also be done, a government statement said.

Provision of self-enumeration would also be made available to the people.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah had reviewed the preparation for the census with Union home secretary, Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India Mritunjay Kumar Narayan and other senior officials here on Sunday.

The census will be conducted in two phases. In phase one -- Houselisting Operation (HLO) -- the housing conditions, assets and amenities of each household will be collected.

Subsequently, in second phase -- Population Enumeration (PE) -- the demographic, socio-economic, cultural and other details of every person in each household will be collected.

This census is the 16th census since the exercise started and eight after Independence, a government statement said.

Very stringent data security measures would be kept in place to ensure data security at the time of collection, transmission and storage, the statement had said.