India moves towards first fully digital Census

New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday soft-launched four digital tools and unveiled the official mascots for Census 2027, marking a significant milestone in preparations for India's first fully digital population count.

The mascots, named Pragati (female enumerator) and Vikas (male enumerator), will serve as the relatable faces of the historic exercise while symbolising equal participation in achieving India's development goals by 2047. The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing developed the four digital platforms to facilitate enumeration operations across the country. The tools include the Houselisting Block Creator web application, which enables charge officers to digitally create houselisting blocks using satellite imagery.

The Census Management and Monitoring System portal will provide real-time tracking of field operations, while Census-as-a-Service will deliver machine-readable datasets to government ministries for faster policy formulation. Census 2027, scheduled to commence in April 2026 with the houselisting phase, represents the world's largest census exercise.

The Union Cabinet approved Rs 11,718 crore for the two-phase operation, which will deploy more than 30 lakh enumerators and supervisors equipped with mobile devices. For the first time, citizens will have the option to self-enumerate through a dedicated portal during a 15-day window preceding house-to-house visits.

The population enumeration phase will take place in February 2027 for most states, with a reference date of 1st March 2027. Snow-bound regions including Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand will conduct their enumeration in September 2026. This 16th census since Independence will include caste enumeration for the first time since 1931, collecting comprehensive demographic, social, and economic data from every household across India through digital means.