The first phase of Census 2027 operations kicks off in Hyderabad and across Telangana on May 11, and for the first time in the country’s history, the entire exercise will go digital. Before you wait for an enumerator to show up at your door, here’s everything you need to know.
What’s the plan?
Telangana Chief Secretary K Ramakrishna Rao called a high-level meeting with all District Collectors on March 3 to map out the state’s preparedness. Director of Census Operations, Telangana, Bharathi Holikeri, who co-chaired the meeting, laid out the operational framework and the training cascade model for field staff.
The Chief Secretary made it clear that Census 2027 is not business as usual.
Data will be collected entirely through a dedicated mobile application, doing away with the paper-heavy process that has defined every census since Independence. The government says this will mean faster processing, better accuracy and real-time data capture.
Two phases, clear timelines
The census will unfold in two phases. Phase 1 – the house listing and housing census – runs nationally from April to September 2026. In Telangana specifically, house listing operations (HLO) will run from May 11 to June 9.
Phase 2, the population enumeration, follows in February 2027. For Telangana, this will run from February 9 to February 28, 2027. The exceptions nationally are Ladakh, snow-bound areas of Jammu and Kashmir and the hill states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where Phase 2 will be conducted in September 2026 itself, ahead of winter.
To manage this across Telangana, approximately 89,000 personnel, including enumerators and nodal officers, are expected to be deployed across the state.
You can do it yourself online
Here’s the part most people don’t know about. You don’t have to wait for an official to come to you. A self-enumeration portal will go live 15 days before the May 11 start date, giving residents the option to fill in their household details online at their own convenience. The portal closes on May 8.
Once you submit, the system generates a unique self-enumeration ID. When the enumerator eventually visits, you simply share this ID and they verify what you’ve already submitted. It saves time for both you and them.
To access the portal, visit the official Census of India 2027 website (click here). Self-enumeration is optional, but officials are clearly hoping it eases the load on field workers, particularly in dense urban areas like Hyderabad.
What will they ask you?
The two phases cover very different ground, so it helps to know what’s coming when.
In Phase 1, the focus is on your home and what’s in it, from housing conditions, whether you have access to clean drinking water, a toilet, electricity and what fuel you use for cooking. You’ll also be asked about internet access and assets in the household, such as radio, television, computer, two-wheelers, four-wheelers and the like.
Phase 2 goes considerably deeper. This is where officials record the number of people in the household along with each person’s name, age, sex, marital status, religion, caste, mother tongue, educational background, disability status, migration history and occupation. Married women will additionally be asked about fertility details.
One thing to keep in mind is that providing all this information is not voluntary. Under Section 8 of the Census Act, 1948, it is legally mandatory.
The caste count, first time since 1931
Perhaps the most politically consequential aspect of Census 2027 is that for the first time since 1931, it will include a nationwide caste enumeration. The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs cleared this in its meeting on April 30, 2025.
Caste data will be captured electronically during Phase 2.
For Telangana, which conducted its own state-level caste survey recently, this has added layers of complexity. Only the 90 castes that figure on the central OBC list will be counted in the census. The remaining 40 castes that the state government and the BC Commission had requested be added are not included. This gap that has already sparked concerns about the underreporting of backward communities in the state.
BC groups here have been voicing their concerns, and the issue is unlikely to go away quietly as enumeration approaches.
Why this census matters
India’s last census was conducted in 2011. The next one was due in 2021 but was pushed back indefinitely after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted all planning. That makes 2027 a full 16-year gap, the longest in the country’s census history.
The stakes go beyond population numbers. The 2027 census is widely expected to serve as the basis for redrawing Lok Sabha constituency boundaries ahead of the 2029 general election, the first delimitation exercise since constituency allocations were frozen in 1976. For a state like Telangana, which was carved out in 2014 and has since grown considerably, the numbers that come out of this census will shape political representation for decades. That alone makes it worth paying attention to.
