Questions on caste to be notified before second phase of census: Govt

New Delhi: Caste enumeration will be done in the second phase of the census and questions, including those on caste, will be finalised and notified before the commencement of the phase called Population Enumeration (PE), the government informed Parliament on Wednesday.

In a written response to a query in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai said the Centre's intention to conduct Census 2027 has been notified.

Caste enumeration will also be done in the second phase of the census exercise called Population Enumeration (PE), in which the demographic, socio-economic, cultural and other details of every person will be collected, he said.

The questions, including on caste, for the second phase will be finalised and notified in accordance with the established procedure,"before the commencement of the second phase of the Census Operation", the minister said.

"Several representations regarding the enumeration of caste have been received from various organisations of different states, including of the state of Tamil Nadu," he added.

Rai said the census is conducted in two phases.

In the first phase, House Listing Operation (HLO) information regarding housing conditions, assets, amenities etc. of each household is collected, while in the second phase -- Population Enumeration (PE) -- the demographic, socio-economic, cultural and other details of every person are collected, he said.

The government notified the questions for the first phase on January 22 and those for the second phase, including questions on caste, will be notified before the second phase, he added.

The massive exercise to collect population-related data from across the country will be carried out by about 30 lakh enumerators and supervisors and around 1.3 lakh census functionaries armed with digital devices.

In a separate response, the minister said mobile apps, the Census Management and Monitoring portal and the Self Enumeration portal for the first phase of the exercise have been developed.

He said suitable security measures have been provisioned during data collection, data transmission and data storage at the server level.

"Provision for offline data collection is available in mobile apps. Only in unavoidable circumstances, enumerators may collect data in paper mode and in such situation, the data will be digitised at the charge level itself," he said.

Rai said the enumerators shall undertake house-to-house field visits in their allotted enumeration block to collect the census data.

"Provision of self-enumeration is an additional facility for the respondents to submit data. House-to-house visit of enumerator will ensure that there is no exclusion on any ground," he said.

The option for self-enumeration shall be given to people for a window of 15 days, just before the start of the houselisting operations. The houselisting operations will take place over a 30-day period, specified by each state and Union Territory between April 1 and September 30 this year.

Census 2027 will be conducted 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 reference date for the said Census shall be 00:00 hours of the first 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," a government notification said last year.

In respect of Ladakh and the snow-bound non-synchronous areas, the reference date shall be 00:00 hours of October 1, 2026, it said.

The decadal exercise, which was scheduled to take place in 2021, was postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

With many firsts planned for Census 2027 -- fully digital, the option of self-enumeration etc. -- the Cabinet has allocated Rs 11,718 crore for the exercise.

The Registrar General of India notified 33 questions on January 22 that will be put to citizens during the first phase of the exercise -- the houselisting and housing census.