Nearly 34 lakh enumerators conducting the upcoming Census, the country’s first fully digital Census, will use their own smartphones and dedicated mobile applications for the exercise, The Indian Express has learned.
According to sources, the enumerators and supervisors deployed by the Registrar General of India (RGI) will use their own devices to collect the data and transfer it to the central server through the mobile applications, which will be available in English as well as in regional languages for both Android and iOS operating systems.
The apps were developed initially for the 2021 Census but are now being redeveloped and recalibrated to match the technological enhancements in mobile phones and operating systems, said a source.
According to the source, if, for some reason, an enumerator collects data on paper, they will have to then enter it on a dedicated web portal so that no subsequent scanning or data entry is required. This means that the Census data will, for the first time, be digitised at the enumerator level itself, ensuring timely availability of the information, the source added.
Sources said the mobile applications will be used in both phases of Census 2027 — the houselisting operation that will be conducted from April to September 2026, and the population enumeration that is scheduled to begin in February 2027 in the entire country, except for Ladakh, J&K, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where it will be conducted in September 2026.
During the houselisting operation, details on housing conditions, household amenities, and assets possessed by the households will be collected.
In the upcoming Census, castes of household members will be enumerated in the upcoming Census, with people also having the option to self-enumerate.
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It is learnt that the RGI, which comes under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, is also developing a website for real-time monitoring and management of the entire exercise. The RGI has sought a Rs 14,618.95-crore budget for the Census.
In 2011, the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) was also conducted in paperless mode, but the handheld electronic devices (tablet PCs) were provided by Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL).
Apart from its digital nature and the self-enumeration option, Census 2027 will also see another first — geo-tagging of all buildings, residential and non-residential.
As reported by The Indian Express on September 2, enumerators will use Digital Layout Mapping (DLM) to geo-tag all buildings with their assigned Houselisting Blocks (HLBs) during the houselisting operations.
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Geo-tagging is the process of assigning a unique latitude-longitude coordinate to a specific building on a Geographical Information System (GIS) map.
