2 min readGuwahatiApr 16, 2026 09:52 PM IST
The first phase of the Census 2027 began Thursday in Mizoram, with the House Listing and Housing Census (HLO) kicking off. The process is expected to continue till May 15, after which the second phase, the Population Enumeration (PE), will begin in February 2027. Mizoram Director of Census Operations, Vinod Kavle told The Indian Express that the foreign refugees residing in the state will be counted in the second phase as per the established census exercises.
“The census counts a person who resides in a particular place at a particular time irrespective of nationalities, except people from the embassies of different countries. It is not connected with citizenship,” said another census official in the state. The census includes questions on migration, including reasons for migration.
While the number keeps fluctuating, the approximate number of refugees in the state is around 30,000 Chin refugees from Myanmar and around 2,000 refugees from Bangladesh. Mizoram has been sheltering thousands of Chin refugees – who share a common ethnicity with Mizos – since the 2021 Myanmar military coup. Before the start of the HLO on Thursday, self-enumeration was conducted on the online portal starting April 1, in which over 10,294 self-enumerations were done till April 15.
The 2011 census recorded Mizoram’s population at 10.97 lakh.
