Census 2027, which will transform the count in a decade into a fully digital enterprise, will have at its heart the Census Management and Monitoring System or CMMS – a dedicated digital portal designed to organize one of the largest administrative exercises in the world, news agency PTI reported on Thursday.
In India’s first fully digital census, the portal will replace clipboards and copies with hand-held devices, geotagged mapping tools and a centralized web-based command platform, marking a decisive break from paper-based enumeration.
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The custom software backbone, designed to monitor the exercise in near real-time, will allow 3.2 million field officials — enumerators and supervisors — to capture granular demographic, social and economic data from hundreds of millions of households using handheld devices, the agency said.
3.2 million field functionaries
Data can be transferred, aggregated and validated through the CMMS architecture, significantly reducing the time required for compilation and error correction.
“The next Census 2027 will make extensive use of digital technology to enhance the quality, efficiency and timeliness of data collection and dissemination. In the upcoming census, data will be collected through digital mode, which will mark a significant and transformative step towards modernizing the census process,” said Registrar General of India Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan in a circular to all Union States and Union Secretaries.
The circular, seen by PTI, says the CMMS will facilitate end-to-end management of enumeration operations, including creation of users at various levels, handling of training modules, creation of houselisting blocks (HLBs) and their description and supervisory circles, allocation of supervisory circles and HLBs, generation of appointment letter and ID cards of enumerators and supervisors, among others.
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She said the CMMS also enables role-based access control to facilitate meetings, training and near-real-time monitoring of field operations.
The software will include a web-based mapping application that facilitates the geo-tagging of housing listing blocks and effectively links spatial data with demographic enumeration.
Digital mapping tools will help officials delineate boundaries with greater precision and reduce overlaps and omissions, officials with knowledge of the development said.
Geo-tagging is expected to improve data integrity and create a valuable digital spatial archive for planning, disaster management and infrastructure development long after census tables have been compiled.
It was approved by the union cabinet ₹11,718 crore to conduct the 2027 census, which would include caste enumeration for the first time.
The 16th census since independence will be a fully digital exercise and will offer citizens the option of doing their own counting.
Delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic
The 10-year exercise, originally planned for 2021, was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The census will be conducted in two phases: the house and apartment census from April to September 2026 and the population census (PE) in February 2027.
The RGI has provided a list of 33 questions that will be asked to citizens during the first phase of the census – lists of houses and flats – from 1 April.
The Dwelling Inventory and House Census systematically lists all structures, houses and households across the country to provide a solid framework for conducting population censuses.
To ensure a fair division of labor between field enumerators in carrying out fiddling operations, a municipality or urban district of a city will be divided into “blocks”, which will be well-defined areas that can be clearly delineated on the ground and for which a census map will be drawn.
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“Such blocks created for HLO and population enumeration (PE) are called houselisting blocks (HLBs) and enumeration blocks (EBs). HLBs/EBs would ultimately be the smallest administrative unit for enumeration and would form the basis for data processing after field operations,” another RGI circular Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan said recently.
The HLB is to be created in accordance with the criteria for a population of 700-800 for residential areas. In sparsely populated non-residential areas, one HLB can be created by removing 300 or more census houses, he said.
The subsequent 2027 census will make extensive use of digital technology to increase the quality, efficiency and timeliness of data collection and dissemination.
“For the first time, creation and delimitation of HLBs, creation of SCs and allotment of Census Commissioners and Supervisors for HLBs and SCs will be done through the Census Monitoring and Management System (CMMS) and HLB Census of India 2027 – Circular No. 10 Page 5 of 12 Creator (HLBC) portals, respectively, Web Mapping Application.
