Boundaries of Administrative units to be frozen on Dec 31, 2025 for Census

30/06/2025

New Delhi, Jun 29: The Centre has asked states and Union Territories to make any proposed changes in the boundaries of administrative units before December 31, when they will be considered final for the census exercise.
In a letter to all states and Union Territories, Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India Mritunjay Kumar Narayan has said that for the Census, all villages and towns are divided into uniform enumeration blocks and for each block, an enumerator is assigned to avoid any miss or repetition during the population count.
According to norms, the Census can be conducted only three months after the freezing of boundary limits of administrative units such as districts, sub-districts, tehsils, talukas and police stations.
Narayan said from April 1, 2026, the Houselisting Operation, the appointment of supervisors and enumerators and the work division among them will be done, and on February 1, 2027, the Census of the population will begin.
It is important that once enumeration blocks are finalised, boundaries of administrative units are not changed, the letter said. In his letter addressed to chief secretaries, Narayan asked them to direct all departments to make any proposed changes in the boundaries of municipal corporations, revenue villages, tehsils, sub-divisions or districts before December 31.
He asked the states and UTs to ensure that no changes should be made in the boundaries of administrative units between January 1, 2026, and March 31, 2027, during which Census exercise will take place.
Any changes in the existing boundaries must be intimated to Census Directorates in the states and Union Territories and Registrar General of India by December 31, 2025, it said.
"For Census 2027, boundaries of administrative units will be frozen on December 31, 2025," the letter said. To ensure a fair workload for enumerators, an administrative unit is divided into manageable sections for the Census called "blocks". A block is a clearly defined area within a village or town on a notional map for census purposes.
India's 16th Census with caste enumeration will be carried out in 2027 with the reference date of October 1, 2026, in snow-bound areas like Ladakh and March 1, 2027, in the rest of the country. The Census will be conducted in two phases. In phase one i.e. houselisting Operation (HLO), the housing conditions, assets and amenities of each household will be collected. Subsequently, in the second phase i.e. Population Enumeration (PE), the demographic, socio-economic, cultural and other details of every person in each household will be collected. In the Census, caste enumeration will also be done, a Government statement had said. For Census activities, about 34 lakh enumerators and supervisors and around 1.3 lakh Census functionaries would be deployed.
It is the 16th Census till now and the eighth after independence. The ensuing Census will be conducted through digital me-ans using mobile applications.
Provision of Self-enumeration would also be made available to the people.

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