People opting for the self-enumeration facility in Census 2027—where they fill, complete and submit the document themselves—will be able to do so in 16 languages. Once they submit their details on the self-enumeration (SE) portal, they will receive a reference ID, which will have to be shared with the enumerator assigned to their locality, The Indian Express has learnt.

Central officials shared these details during a conference of chief secretaries, state nodal officers and directors of Census operations held in New Delhi on January 23, sources said.

The SE portal will reportedly be available in Assamese, Bengali, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.

To allow the self-enumeration facility, the Centre had changed the Census Rules, 1990, in March 2022. As per the amended rules, a person can fill, complete, and submit the census schedule through self-enumeration.

Sources said respondents can log into the SE portal by entering their mobile number—this will be mandatory—and other details. Once a respondent has filled all the questions given in the census schedule, a reference ID (SE ID) will be generated and sent to the registered mobile number of the respondent.

“This SE ID is to be handed over to the enumerator during the field visit by the self-enumerated household. After checking the self-enumeration data, the enumerator will include it in the original database,” a source said.

The Census has been conducted in India since 1872. Census 2027 will be the 16th census overall and the eighth since Independence. The first phase of Census 2027, the Houselisting and Housing Census, is scheduled to begin on April 1 this year. The second phase of the Census, population enumeration, will take place in February 2027.

The self-enumeration facility will be available from 15 days before the start of house listing operations in a state or Union Territory.

The Registrar General of India (RGI), which comes under the Ministry of Home Affairs, issued a notification last week regarding the details to be collected during the house-listing process. Details on 33 items, including buildings and assets possessed by households, will be collected. The Centre has approved a budget of Rs 11,718.24 crore for Census 2027.

The RGI has developed a Census Management and Monitoring System, a web-based platform to manage and monitor various Census 2027 activities. This will allow deployment of enumerators and supervisors and real-time monitoring of data collection, a source said.`