DC Edit | Will Census Trigger New Demands?

After a lag of six years, India will undertake its decennial headcount in 2027, which will generate data that forms the bedrock for policy and administrative decisions. The Census exercise, which was conducted across India by the British for the first time in 1872, missed its appointed year in 2021 because of the Covid pandemic and other reasons.

With India overtaking China in population, the 2027 Census will be the world’s largest such exercise, involving a headcount of nearly 150 crore people. This will also be the largest such count ever conducted in the history of humankind, because no country or empire has ever had a population of 150 crores.

The 2027 Census will be the first one after the 1931 headcount to count people along the lines of caste, which could potentially lead to demands for major changes in the country’s reservation policy.

The headcount exercise will happen in two phases. The first phase will involve the listing of houses over a period of 45 days, anytime between April 1, 2026, and September 30, 2026. The second phase will involve the population enumeration between September 2026 and October 1, 2026, for the Himalayan states, and between February 9 and February 28, 2027, for the rest of the country.

The final population count, however, will be recorded as on March 1, 2027 — meeting the requirement for the delimitation of constituencies of the Lok Sabha, Vidhan Sabhas, and panchayati raj institutions.

The Constitution mandates the redrawing of boundaries of constituencies after every Census. However, Parliament in 1972 and 2001 froze the number of MP and MLA seats based on the 1971 Census to promote a population control programme.

As the delimitation freeze ends after 2026, leaders from southern India — the region that would drastically lose its representation in the Lok Sabha — suspect that the Narendra Modi government has chosen the timing of the Census to end this 55-year-long freeze on delimitation.