The Centre decided to prepone the population enumeration exercise of the Census 2027 in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Goa and Uttarakhand, four states where the assembly elections are due next year, according to a notification issued on Saturday.
As announced by the government in June last year, the population enumeration for the rest of the country will take place in February while it is currently underway in Ladakh, and snowbound areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The change in dates for population count in these four states has advanced the reference date – the point at which all the data collected is treated as valid. As previously decided, the reference date for the rest of the country will be March 1, 2017. It is October 1 this year for Ladakh, and snowbound areas of J&K, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
“The conduct of Census of the population shall be undertaken in the States of Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and areas other than snow-bound areas of Uttarakhand, from December 1, 2026 to January 4, 2027 with a revisional round from January 5 to January 9,” according to a gazette notification issued by Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan, the registrar general of India, regarding the decision to advance the phase. The reference date for Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and areas other than snowbound areas of Uttarakhand “shall now be 00.00 hours of January 5, 2027”, according to the notification.
The Union government had taken the decision on August 31 to defer the Census in Manipur amid mounting violence and demands by large chunks of the population to update the National Register of Citizens (NRC) before conducting the population enumeration exercise.
Officials who didn’t want to be named said “the dates for poll-bound states have been advanced to have manpower available for elections as well as Census, because a large number of staff used in both the exercises are teachers or state government staff”.
