House listing exercise to begin on April 16

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government on Tuesday announced one-month-long house listing exercise from mid-April as part of the work for Census 2027, a notification said. The notification, issued by the Revenue and Disaster Management department, said that the house listing exercise will be carried out across the State from April 16 to May 15, 2026.

”During the period of 30 days an option for self-enumeration shall be conducted in 15 days’ time period between April 1, 2026 to April 15, 2026, just before the start of house-to-house listing operations,” it said.

According to sources in the Census Directorate, under the provision of self-enumeration, residents willing to submit their details on their own can do so between April 1 and April 15, 2026. State Census Operations Joint Director Hemant Kumar Singh said there will be no paperwork and all the operations will be digital.

The census will be conducted in two phases. In the first phase, the officials will focus on house listing, while the second phase, scheduled to begin in February 2027, will involve a door-to-door population census or collecting individual demographic details.

Nearly one lakh people will be engaged in enumeration in Odisha, and each official will cover around 200 households. One supervisor will monitor the work of six enumerators. Enumerators will be paid an incentive of Rs 25,000 for their services.

The training for enumerators has been conducted for the last six months and pre-test surveys have already been conducted in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack. Nearly 90 per cent of the census data is likely to be collected through digital mode.