By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, March 31: The next round of India’s population census will commence in phases from April 2026, with Meghalaya set to begin its part of the exercise from mid-May, officials informed on Tuesday.
Registrar General and Census Commissioner Mritunjay Kumar Narayan said Census 2027 will mark a transition to a fully digital process, alongside the introduction of self-enumeration for the first time.
As per the schedule for Meghalaya, residents will be given an opportunity to fill in their household details online between May 1 and May 15. This will precede the House Listing and Housing Census, which will be carried out through field visits from May 16 to June 14.
During this stage, information related to housing conditions, access to basic services, and household assets will be collected. Officials said such data is essential for planning welfare initiatives and infrastructure development, particularly in regions with diverse settlement patterns.
The census process will rely on mobile-based applications, with enumerators using smartphones to record and upload data. The self-enumeration facility will be available in 16 languages, and households completing the process will receive a unique identification number for verification purposes.
The overall exercise has been divided into two phases. The first phase, spanning April to September 2026, will focus on house listing and housing-related data. The second phase, scheduled for February 2027, will cover population enumeration, including demographic, socio-economic, education, and migration details. Officials confirmed that caste data will also be collected during this phase.
The Union government has allocated Rs 11,718.24 crore for the census, which will involve more than 30 lakh enumerators and supervisors nationwide, supported by an extensive training mechanism.
Prior to the rollout, a nationwide pre-test was conducted in November 2025 across about 5,000 census blocks to evaluate digital systems and operational readiness.
