Census advanced in four poll-bound States, deferred in Manipur

The Union government on Saturday (September 5, 2026) advanced the Population Enumeration phase of Census 2027 in the poll-bound States of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa, scheduling the exercise from November 16, 2026, to January 4, 2027, ahead of the nationwide enumeration planned for February 2027.

The government also formally deferred the Census exercise in Manipur “till further declaration.” The second phase of Census 2027 will have 40 questions and include an open-ended field for recording caste details. Respondents will also have the option of either not disclosing their caste or stating that they do not belong to any caste.

This is the first time that caste, other than Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe, will be enumerated in Independent India. There are at least 13 new questions compared with the 2011 Census. The questions being introduced relate to spouse’s name, nationality, father’s particulars and mother’s particulars, digital literacy, permanent residential address, place of Covid-19 vaccination, number of bank accounts, passport number, availability of driving licence and mobile, Aadhaar and voter ID numbers, if available.

Most Census enumerators are government school-teachers, who will also be deployed for election duty. According to a notification issued under the Census Act, 1948, the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India (RG&CCI), the enumeration in the four States will be followed by a revisional round from January 5 to January 9, 2027.

Residents of these States will have the option of self-enumeration through a dedicated portal between November 16 and November 30, 2026, ahead of the door-to-door survey, which will begin on December 1. The government has fixed 00.00 hours on January 5, 2027, as the reference date for the census in these States and the region, while for the rest of the country, the said date is March 1.

The reference date for Ladakh and the snow-bound areas of Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, where the population enumeration is going on, is October 1, 2026. The first notification for the Population Census 2027 was issued on June 16, 2025, in which it was said that the next Census will be conducted in February 2027, except for Ladakh and the snow-bound areas of Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, where both the phases will be completed by September 30.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said the fresh notification shows “shoddy planning” on the part of the Government. “The population enumeration that was to take place in Feb 2027 as part of the Census 2027 exercise (which was due in 2021) has been advanced in UP, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa, where elections are due early next year.

This shows shoddy planning since it was known that these elections were due. Why the sudden dawn of wisdom? Undoubtedly there are some nefarious political calculations afoot,” Mr. Ramesh said. “Question #10 being asked on caste is deliberately very poorly designed and will render the whole caste census exercise meaningless.

The LoP-LS and LoP-RS had written to the PM on Aug 20, 2026, on this issue. Clearly, their pleas for mid-course correction and their constructive suggestions to follow the Bihar and Telangana questionnaire model have been totally ignored,” he posted on X.

Meanwhile, another notification was issued for Manipur deferring the Census exercise indefinitely. A large section of civil society groups from the Meitei and Naga communities has demanded that a National Register of Citizens (NRC) be compiled first before the Census exercise is undertaken in the ethnic violence-hit State.

Though the Census is not an exercise to determine citizenship and counts all individuals irrespective of nationality, there is anxiety among a section of people in the northeastern State that the next delimitation exercise, which will redraw the boundaries of electoral constituencies, may take into account the latest Census data in a manner that could disadvantage the Meiteis and the other small tribal communities.

Manipur has three major communities—the Meitei, the tribal Naga and the Kuki-Zo. Following a meeting between Home Minister Amit Shah and Chief Minister Y. Khemchand Singh on August 30 in Delhi, the first phase of Census was deferred in the State.

The first phase of Population Census 2027, the House Listing and Housing Census (HLO), was scheduled in Manipur from September 1 to 30, but training of enumerators, mostly government school teachers, was halted amid protests by civil society groups.