UP gears up for Census 2027, 5.5 lakh enumerators to be trained

According to sources, eight officers from UP completed their training as “national trainers” in Delhi last week for the House-listing and Housing Census. These national trainers will further train nearly 300 master trainers who will further train nearly 7,000 field trainers.

“Field trainers will subsequently train nearly 5.5 lakh enumerator supervisors and enumerators who will conduct the census exercise on ground finally,” said an official.

One enumerator supervisor will be deployed for every six enumerators.

The House-listing phase involves a door-to-door survey of every structure in the country to collect data on housing conditions and household amenities. Enumerators will record details such as use of the building, construction material, number of rooms, ownership status, access to water, electricity and toilets, cooking fuel, and ownership of assets like phones, vehicles and televisions.

A pre-test of the House-listing and Housing Census was carried out recently in Anoopshahar tehsil of Bulandshahr district, Mihinpurwa tehsil of Bahraich district and a few wards of the Prayagraj Municipal Corporation.

“It was like a full-dress rehearsal. Enumerators visited houses in the assigned area and filled in details of houses in the mobile app on their smartphones successfully,” an official said.

Ahead of the House-listing exercise, all administrative units (district, sub-division, tehsil, municipal or village and local bodies) in the state will remain frozen as of December 31, 2025, and no jurisdictional changes will be made in any administrative unit from January 1, 2026, to March 31, 2027.

A meeting of the State-Level Census Coordination Committee (SLCCC) was chaired by UP Chief Secretary S P Goyal last week, where discussions were held regarding the Census exercise and deployment of officers for fieldwork.

For the first time, citizens will have the facility of self-enumeration, Director (Census Operations) Sheetal Verma informed during her presentation on the census process in the SLCCC meeting. UP’s General Administration department has been designated as the state nodal department to coordinate with different departments for the exercise.

Population enumeration — covering individual-level data such as age, education, occupation, religion, caste, migration and disability — will be completed between February 9 and February 28, 2027.

Census 2027 will be India’s first digital census, with enumerators using mobile apps on their smartphones to fill in details related to housing census and population enumeration.

In the previous 2011 Census, over 4 lakh enumerators had been deployed in UP for conducting the decadal exercise but the number of enumerators has been increased due to the increase in population, officials said.

The caste census will be conducted along with the population census; questions for castes — other than SCs and STs — will be announced later. A revisional round of the population census will be done from March 1 to March 5.