It has been decided to conduct Population Census-2027 in two phases along with enumeration of castes. The reference date for Population Census - 2027 will be 00:00 hours of the first day of March, 2027. For the Union Territory of Ladakh and the non-synchronous snow-bound areas of the UT of Jammu and Kashmir and States of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the reference date will be 00.00 hours of the first day of October, 2026. The notification for intent of conducting Population Census with the above reference dates will be published in the official gazette tentatively on 16.06.2025, as per provision of section 3 of Census Act 1948.

The Census of India is conducted under the provisions of the Census Act, 1948 and the Census Rules, 1990. The last Census of India was conducted in 2011 in two phases, namely i) Phase I – House Listing (HLO) (1 April to 30 September 2010) and (ii) Phase II – Population Enumeration (PE) (09 February to 28 February 2011) with reference date - 00:00 hours of the first day of March 2011, except for snow-bound non-synchronous areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh for which it was conducted during 11 to 30 September 2010 with reference date as 00.00 hours of the first day of October 2010.

Census 2021 was also proposed to be conducted in two phases in a similar manner with phase I during April-September 2020 and second phase in February 2021. All the preparations for the first phase of the Census to be conducted in 2021 were completed and field work was scheduled to begin in some States/UTs from April 1, 2020. However, due to the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic across the country, the census work was postponed.

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