India sets 40-question roadmap for Census 2027, with caste and vaccination details added
?s government has notified 40 questions for Census 2027, including a question on caste and the place where a person received a Covid-19 vaccine. The
India’s government has notified 40 questions for Census 2027, including a question on caste and the place where a person received a Covid-19 vaccine. The population count will begin first in snow-bound areas from September 1, while the rest of the country will be covered in 2027.
The questionnaire, issued by the Registrar General of India Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan, also asks whether respondents belong to a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe. The inclusion of caste marks a major shift: this will be the first census in independent India to collect caste data, apart from SC and ST categories.
What changes in the next census
The Union government notified the schedule for the population enumeration phase on Friday. Census officers will collect household information through the second phase of the exercise, which comes after houselisting and housing details were covered earlier in the process.
Among the newly added or modified fields are questions on parents’ particulars, nationality, bank accounts and identity documents such as Aadhaar, voter ID, passport number and driving licence. The list also includes place of Covid vaccination, date of birth and age, literacy and digital literacy status, and whether a person attends an educational institution.
Several questions mirror ones that earlier appeared in the National Population Register schedule notified in 2020, including details about parents and their places of birth. Those questions had stirred controversy then, amid fears over how the information might be used.
Where and when enumeration starts
A government order says population enumeration in Ladakh and in snow-bound non-synchronous areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand will run from September 1 to 30. For the rest of India, the population enumeration phase will begin in 2027.
The government has also opened an option for self-enumeration from August 17 to 31, just before house-to-house counting begins in those early-start regions. That window gives residents a chance to submit details before enumerators arrive at their doors.
Officials have described Census 2027 as India’s first fully digital census. The 2021 exercise was delayed, and the new round is expected to feed into one of the country’s biggest data-gathering operations in decades.
The final field rollout now moves to the mountain districts first. After that, the rest of the country follows next year.
