The provisional data for Population Census 2027 will be available by March or April next year, according to Amit Sharma, Chief Principal Census Officer and Director of Census Operations for Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
On several occasions, people confused the Census exercise with the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, Mr. Sharma said on Tuesday.
The Union government also formally deferred the Census exercise in conflict-ridden Manipur “till further declaration. Mr. Mr.
On September 5, the PE phase was advanced in the poll-bound States of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, and Goa, scheduled to take place from November 16, 2026 to January 4, 2027, ahead of the nationwide enumeration planned for February 2027. The PE phase features an enumerator spending 30 to 60 minutes on average in each household, to ask a set of 40 questions and collate the answers on an app developed for the exercise, a government official said. Sharma said that provisional data from the PE phase shows that 5,292 enumeration blocks have been covered in the designated snow-bound areas of J&K (4,597 blocks) and Ladakh (695 blocks). Each enumeration block typically comprises a population of 750 to 800 people.
Because of the difficult terrain and climatic conditions, sharma said the completion of the exercise was an important operational milestone and involved specialised arrangements.
“We had to explain to the people that Census and SIR are different; while SIR is done by the Election Commission of India (ECI), Census is done every ten-years,” he said, explaining the initiatives taken to publicise the Census exercise.
