The winter chill has set in, and Suman, a teacher in Aniwas village in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district, is out after school hours to geotag homes and institutions. Glued to her Oppo smartphone, which she purchased in 2020, Suman has to capture the latitude and longitude of every house she visits using the compass on her screen. She must feed these details into the Digital Layout Map (DLM) mobile application.
Multi-step process
Recording coordinates is just one part of the job. The next task is to ask a set of 35 questions to each household, including the construction materials used for the floor and roof, the main cereal consumed, the source of drinking water, cooking fuel, among others. These data are to be stored on another app called the Census 2027-Houselist.
Suman and several other teachers, mostly women, have been engaged by the district administration to test-run an important task: the country’s first-ever digital Census.
It will be India’s first population count since 2011. The exercise, originally scheduled for 2021, was indefinitely delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although pandemic-related restrictions ended by 2022, the government did not explain the continuing delay.
Under the Constitution, the first Census after 2026 can be used as the basis to redraw Lok Sabha constituencies. The next general election is expected to be held in 2029.
Census officials conducting a pre-test exercise of the population census 2027 at Anupshahr, Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh on November 19, 2025.
| Photo Credit:
R.V. Moorthy
The final enumeration will be held between April 1, 2026 and February 28, 2027. The intent to conduct the Census was notified in a gazette on June 16, 2025. It will be carried out as per the provisions of the Census Act, 1948.
The ongoing testing phase, termed a “pre-test” by the government, is divided into two phases. The first — the House Listing and Housing Operation (HLO) — is being conducted from November 10-30 in selected areas of all States and Union Territories.
A window for self-enumeration was available from November 1-7. The second phase, the Population Enumeration (PE), has not yet been scheduled.
On August 22, the Registrar-General & Census Commissioner of India (RG & CCI), Mritunjay Kumar, in a letter to the Directors of Census Operations (DCOs) of all States, called the pre-test a “full dress rehearsal” involving the entire government machinery.
The second-phase pre-test
Officials are yet to finalise the methodology to enumerate caste for the upcoming Census exercise. In 2011, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government conducted the first-ever caste count, separate from the Census exercise, but the findings were never made public.
In 2021, the Union government submitted an affidavit to the Supreme Court that caste data enumerated in the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) of 2011 were fraught with “mistakes and inaccuracies”.
Census officials conducting pre pre-test exercise of the population census 2027 at Anupshahr, Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh on November 19, 2025.
| Photo Credit:
R.V. Moorthy
While the number of castes recorded in the 1931 Census conducted under the British was 4,147, the SECC showed more than 46 lakh caste surnames. “Assuming that some castes may bifurcate into sub-castes, the total number cannot be exponentially high to this extent,” the affidavit read, adding that such data could not be relied upon to determine reservations in admission, employment, or elections to local authorities.
While the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are on the Central list, the challenge lies with enumerating Other Backward Classes, who are on Central and State lists. This is one of the reasons the pre-test has been divided into two phases. There is, however, no confusion over housing-related questions.
A pre-test is required to test the efficacy of the entire exercise. This includes evaluating the proposed questions, data collection methodologies, training effectiveness, logistics, printing processes, and data quality assessment, along with identifying potential field issues as well.
In 2019, when a pre-test was conducted for the 2021 Census, the questions to be asked for the HLO and PE phases were tested in one go, from August 12 to September 30 the same year. It covered more than 26 lakh people in 76 districts of 36 States and Union Territories. Around 6,000 enumerators and 1,100 supervisors from State governments were engaged.
RG & CCI Narayan had earlier informed States that the boundaries of administrative units will be frozen by December 31. Any changes to the limits of tehsils and districts would have to be completed before then.
Women on ground
At the tehsil office in Bulandshahr’s Anupshahr, a help desk has been set up to help enumerators understand the pre-test exercise and their role in it. Four women from the Directorate of Census Operations in Lucknow have been deputed at the tehsil, 400 kilometres from the Uttar Pradesh capital, to help the enumerators navigate the technical glitches or any other issues that they may face in the field.
A three-day training was also provided at the tehsil office to make enumerators, mostly teachers and other government employees, familiar with the digital Census process.
Suman, who teaches science to students from Classes 1-5 at Aniwas School, says these days she starts her day at 7.30 a.m. and wraps up by 5 p.m. School hours are from 9 a.m. to 3.30 p.m. She must cover 166 households with an estimated population of around 700 people in Aniwas village for the pre-test exercise. She first geotags homes, then makes a second trip to ask the 35 questions.
Sandhya, the ‘lekhpal’ (a clerk in the State Revenue Department), who is supervising the exercise, navigates the lanes with Suman to see if data are being entered correctly.
“We have deliberately chosen women to lead the tests. During the day, mostly women are at home as men are away at work. Women are comfortable with other women asking the questions. So it is easier for us,” says Sandhya. Each government functionary at the Anupshahr tehsil office is being given an honorarium of ₹10,000 for the pre-test.
Suman says that the entire exercise is digitally monitored by officials at the headquarters in Lucknow. “If you think I can simply fill data sitting at home, that is not possible. The geocoordinates of each household that are stored in the DLM app are linked with the Houselist app. So If I am not present at the location, the Houselist app will not accept data. Moreover, the coordinates are shared in real time,” says Suman.
She adds that she has to survey the homes serial-number-wise. “I cannot skip from one house to another without completing the task,” she says.
In the August 2025 letter to the DCOs of all States, the RG & CCI had proposed that 25-50% of the enumerators in the pre-test be women. The DCO in the State is the nodal officer from the Office of the Registrar General of India. Each DCO will coordinate with the State government on the Census.
It was important for enumerators to be embedded in the community, so they are familiar with the surroundings and the people, says a Census official. The official adds, “Teachers and other government officials who are roped in for the job are already known in the area. But if someone asks detailed questions, we have trained the enumerators to explain the purpose of the exercise for the country.”
During the training, the enumerators were acquainted with the questions and also given tips to identify households.
“The kitchen is the basic unit of a household. If a building has multiple residents, what defines a family is whether they share a kitchen. So a house may have multiple families. They will be enumerated based on their kitchen usage,” the official says.
Door to door
As Suman enters one of the bylanes of Aniwas village to record data on her phone, one of the doors is answered by Shalini Sharma, who is studying for a master’s degree in sociology.
When Suman says she has come for the Census, Sharma demands an explanation. Lekhpal Sandhya explains that this is a pre-test exercise for the Census that will happen in 2027 and that three villages from their district have been selected. “We will ask you about the number of people in your family, what material is the house made of, what amenities you have…” Shalini understands that this is being done to determine India’s future.
Around 24 lakh enumeration blocks (EB) finalised for the Census that was scheduled for 2021 are likely to be used for the 2027 Census. Each EB usually comprises 150-180 houses or 650-800 people. Other than her smartphone, Suman also carries a printout of the questions, which she has clasped onto a writing board. “It is easier to read questions from the paper and then feed answers into the phone,” she says.
As she moves ahead, the door is answered by another resident who identifies himself as Om Bir Singh Sisodia. When he is asked if he knew what the exercise was about, Sisodia says, “I think this is for voter registration.”
vijaita.singh@thehindu.co.in
Edited by Sunalini Mathew
