Census 2027: What are the new questions, and how are enumerators being trained? | Explained

The Story So Far: Before door-to-door enumeration for the second phase of the Census begins in Uttar Pradesh and three other poll-bound States of Uttarakhand, Goa and Punjab on December 1, ahead of the rest of the country in January 2027, field trainers are preparing the enumerators for the challenging task ahead. The second phase of the Census — the Population Enumeration will ask 40 questions, and the enumerators need to spend at least 20-25 minutes with each respondent, unlike the first phase — the Houselisting Operations (HLO), which took a few minutes.

Each enumeration block comprises around 750-800 people. The Hindu attended a training session for the Population Enumeration phase of Census in one of the districts in Uttar Pradesh on October 29 to understand how enumerators were being readied for the exercise, which for the first time will ask 13 new questions including caste, (other than Scheduled Tribe/Scheduled Caste), religion, place and date of birth of both parents, number of bank accounts, spouse’s name, nationality, digital literacy, permanent residential address, place of Covid-19 vaccination, passport number, driving licence availability and mobile, Aadhaar and voter ID numbers, if available.

At the training session in Uttar Pradesh, a field-trainer explained the importance of Question number 37, 10 C and others in the upcoming second phase of Census, which seeks the respondent’s Aadhaar number and caste details.