
Amit Shah reviews preparation for 2027 Census, official notification out tomorrow
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday reviewed the preparations for the upcoming Census of India in a high-level meeting held in New Delhi. The review was attended by the Union Home Secretary, the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India (RG&CCI), and other senior officials.According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, the official gazette notification for conducting the Census will be published on June 16. This Census will mark the 16th national Census since its inception and the eighth since India's independence.advertisement"Reviewed the preparations for the 16th Census with senior officials. Tomorrow, the gazette notification of the census will be issued. The census will include caste enumeration for the first time. As many as 34 lakh enumerators and supervisors and around 1.3 lakh census functionaries will conduct the operation with cutting-edge mobile digital gadgets," said Amit Shah after the review.
The Census will be carried out in two phases. In the first phase, known as the Houselisting Operation (HLO), data regarding housing conditions, household assets, and amenities will be collected.The second phase, Population Enumeration (PE), will gather demographic, socio-economic, cultural, and other personal information about every individual residing in the household. For the first time, caste enumeration will also be part of the Census exercise.The entire Census operation will be conducted digitally using mobile applications. Citizens will also be given the option of self-enumeration through digital platforms. Amit Shah emphasised that strict data protection protocols will be enforced at every stage of the process, including during data collection, transmission, and storage.The scale of the operation will be enormous, with the deployment of nearly 34 lakh enumerators and supervisors, along with around 1.3 lakh Census functionaries across the country.Must Watch
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Hans India
18 minutes ago
- Hans India
From ‘Kamandal' to Mandal, politics takes a new direction
Caste politics is a grim and ever-present reality in India. Over the years, it has become a desensitised, easy to calculate arithmetic for all political parties. No outfit that survives only on casteist politics attempts to justify its existence anymore, as it has become part of mainstream political tactics. However, the muddled and manipulative methods to inflate the influence of each of the leading caste groups for brazen political mileage and allied benefits would have to undergo a reality check soon. Hopefully. The Centre has bitten the bullet and is to take up a caste census survey alongside the Census enumeration exercise, in two phases. While this activity is still nearly two years away from gaining momentum, in the neighbourhood, the Congress government in Karnataka has retracted its earlier 2015-16 caste census report and announced a fresh one. This was because the Siddaramaiah government had to acknowledge the vociferous opposition by two of the leading castes – Vokkaligas and Lingayats – who accused the report of underrepresenting their numbers while inflating others, including the minority population, which avowedly was more than one of the castes. Even as the new caste census is waiting to take-off, the BJP, as expected, has not stopped its trenchant criticism in this regard. They not only accuse the government of having been dishonest with the earlier report but allege that the new caste survey announcement is to divert attention from the monumental stampede tragedy which rocked the state and the cricket-loving country in the first week of June. The official reason is still that the new socio-economic and educational survey would be more inclusive as the earlier one was found deficient in certain aspects. This opinion too has not gone uncontested as some OBC castes seem to be content with the findings of the earlier survey and have agreed to its implementation. With the High Command in Delhi setting a deadline of less than three months to complete the re-enumeration exercise as of present, the Karnataka government may take it up expeditiously. Moreover, with the bragging rights still with the GOP for initiating this contentious exercise and coming up with a report, however contentious, it would want to hold on to its head start in this regard. Meanwhile, opposition to the findings of the earlier report was not just from various caste groups in the State, but also from ministers, representing different castes, who feared that the ground would slip from beneath their feet if they allowed implementation of the survey report. Interestingly, Yathindra, Congress MLC and son of the incumbent Chief Minister, said something similar that highlights the collective backing for the earlier survey report among the non-Vokkaliga, Lingayat formations. He even explained in detail how the backward classes, including the minorities, accounted for 75 per cent of the population, while decrying the fact they were not adequately represented in society. In the 1990s, the BJP had used 'Kamandal', a reference to the Hindu sentiment to blunt the rise of Mandal Commission fallout to come to power in various states, before optimally exploiting it to seize control at the Centre in 2014. Is history about to repeat itself?


Hindustan Times
2 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Census 2027: Assessing pros and cons of self-enumeration exercise
It's a much delayed Census, and changes are afoot. On Monday, the government notified the 2027 Indian Census, which will be the first census exercise in India in 16 years. India has seen significant economic, political, and technological transformation in this time period. There is also a lot riding politically on the Census. Also Read: Centre issues notification for caste census, says 2-phase exercise to begin in 2027 It will likely be the basis for the controversial National Register of Citizens (NRC), which can be used to determine citizenship in India, should the government decided to extend the National Population Registry to a NRC; the next round of delimitation (drawing constituency boundaries); and caste reservations. This iteration of the Census will also include a 'caste census' — enumerating Indians by caste for the first time since 1931, which will certainly impact the allotment of reservations for other backward classes (OBCs). With so much riding on the Census, a curious little addition to the census procedure, with no details, was included in the notification. For the first time ever, India will allow 'self-enumeration' which will allow citizens to fill out Census data without a visit from a census enumerator. Also Read: BJP will have to give people their due 'bhagidari': UP Cong in charge Let us take a closer look at the challenges and implications of self-enumeration. Many developed countries, such as the US, essentially use self-enumeration in the Census — as door-to-door canvassing is not operationally or fiscally feasible. Given India's advancement in biometric identification, greater mobile phone connectivity, and the difficulty of interviewing populations on the move such as commuters and migrants, it makes sense for the government to experiment with this idea. Also Read: UP Congress pushes caste census, begins statewide outreach Beyond operational ease, self-enumeration can offer many advantages for procuring high quality data. It is no secret that demographics in many parts of India are highly sensitive matters. To take one example, speaking Bengali as a first language in the state of Assam has become politicized. Imagine how a Bengali speaker may respond to the language questions in the census if directly speaking to an Assamese-speaking enumerator. The interaction may cause the speaker to lie about their first language, or the enumerator may intimidate the respondent to generate incorrect data. Similar claims can be made about declaring oneself as Muslim where there is a threat of religious intimidation or being a Hindi-speaker in Karnataka. In principle, if privacy protocols are sufficiently strong, respondents may more honestly report their demographics and this could yield some surprising (but more correct) results. In this manner, the push to self-enumeration may help reduce 'surveyor bias.' At the same time, there can be genuine concerns about data quality with self-enumeration, from a greater likelihood of data entry error to purposeful misrepresentation. The Census data is complicated, and enumerators are given strict guidelines about how to code various definition (the definition of the household). How will these guidelines genuinely be communicated to the citizen, and will people be able to apply them systematically? Are we certain that each person that desires to enter data through self-enumeration will have the functional literacy to do so? But beyond entry error, there are genuine concerns of wilful misrepresentation. If we are concerned that the Census can only be filled by persons with a certain level of functional literacy, then it is equally true that those that do not reach that level will be obliged to look to others, such as 'agents,' to fill out the information. Given that this data will now be tied to a caste census and to a national register, will there be a secondary market that develops to fill out the information in the 'right way'? For instance, will better organized caste groups get 'better enumeration' through self-enumeration? Data fidelity is a major concern, even in the US. After the information is collected, the US runs a Post-Enumeration Survey to characterize the bias and error in self-enumeration. Is this something to which the government is committed? Will there be sufficient coordination in the system to know who has engaged self-enumeration and who needs a visit from a Census enumerator? In other words, when there are multiple ways of entering in the system, there are genuine concerns of redundancy but also miscoordination that misses out on Indians. Perhaps this initial run a self-enumeration will see a low adoption rate. But if the government is committed to moving to a system of self-enumeration for a significant share of the population, these are all issues that will have to be addressed. We all expect some growing pains. The biggest challenges will occur if self-enumeration throws up some surprising results, like higher than expected number of Bengali speakers in Assam. Will the data be seen as more accurate or the subject of manipulation? How will the validity of such surprising data be adjudicated? Given the operational costs of the Census, it was only a matter of time before the government looked to self-enumeration. As the government builds out the guidelines on self-enumeration in future notifications, it will need to think through these concerns to guarantee that the data remain high quality. Neelanjan Sircar is Associate Professor, Division of Social Sciences, Ahmedabad University


India Today
3 hours ago
- India Today
'Popular' Yogi Adityanath, 'friend' Keshav Maurya: Decoding Amit Shah's UP speech
Union Home Minister Amit Shah's recent visit to Lucknow sparked political chatter as he shared the stage with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya. The event, held to distribute appointment letters to over 60,000 newly recruited police personnel, marked Shah's first appearance in the state after the Lok Sabha elections and was closely watched for signals regarding the BJP's political direction in Uttar the hour-long event, Shah sat at the centre of the stage with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on his right and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Maurya on his the programme progressed, Shah was seen interacting with both leaders. However, it was his address that drew the most attention, particularly when he referred to Maurya as his "priya mitra" (dear friend) in Yogi Adityanath's presence. The remark gained significant traction on social media. While most viral clips focused on Shah calling Maurya his friend, they left out the earlier part of his speech where he praised Yogi as "the most popular (lokpriya ) and successful Chief Minister".With this, Shah seemed to make two key messages clear: one, that there is no question over Yogi's leadership in the state, and two, that Keshav Maurya remains an important and trusted figure within the BJP publicly acknowledging Maurya as his friend, Shah sent a clear message within party ranks that Maurya, despite recent setbacks, continues to enjoy the confidence of the top leadership. Shah's remarks also appeared to reassert Maurya's relevance as the BJP's most prominent OBC face in Uttar Pradesh, especially at a time when his political stature had seemingly diminished after losing his own seat in the Assembly elections and facing setbacks in his region during the Lok Sabha noted that Shah's speech not only reaffirmed Yogi Adityanath's place as the BJP's face in the state but also clarified that the party's future strategy would continue to revolve around key OBC leaders like Keshav BJP, which rose to power in UP with a carefully crafted caste coalition, appears to be returning to its old formula ahead of the 2027 BJP's renewed emphasis on OBC representation also comes against the backdrop of the opposition's growing focus on caste narratives. Akhilesh Yadav has repeatedly called the Yogi government a regime of a particular caste and has pushed the narrative of "Thakur vs PDA" (Pichda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak). Shah's subtle endorsement of Maurya, therefore, is also being viewed as a course correction to counter this opposition responding to Shah's speech, first took a swipe at the BJP on social media and later targeted the Yogi government during a press conference, pointing out the absence of Maurya in some posters and questioning the party's internal Shah's speech was also carefully aligned with the setting. Of the more than 60,000 recruits, 15 individuals representing various castes and communities received their appointment letters symbolically from the Union Minister. This caste-conscious selection was seen as a signal of the BJP's intention to maintain social balance and appeal across this visit, Shah appeared to have reset the BJP's political message in Uttar Pradesh. As the party looks ahead to 2027, the signal is clear: the top leadership stands firmly with Yogi Adityanath as the face of the government and sees Keshav Maurya as a vital part of its ongoing OBC Watch