Key Points

Taking to social media platform X on Monday evening, the Press Information Bureau (PIB) said: "Always rely on authentic sources for accurate information," urging people not to believe in unverified content circulating online.

PIB also in another post on X said: "The Government has already announced that the Caste enumeration will be conducted along with Census 2027. Please see the details below: https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2136515."

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on June 15 reviewed the preparation for the forthcoming Census with the Union Home Secretary, Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, and other senior officials in New Delhi.

The notification to conduct the Census was published in official gazette on Monday.

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 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 Census, Caste enumeration will also be done.

For Census activities, about 34 lakh enumerators and supervisors and around 1.3 lakh Census functionaries would be deployed.

This Census is the 16th since beginning and eighth after Independence.

The ensuing Census will be conducted through digital means using mobile applications.

The provision of self-enumeration would also be made available to the people.

Very stringent data security measures would be kept in place to ensure data security at the time of collection, transmission and storage.

Earlier, the Union Home Ministry had also fact-checked the misleading information.

The Union Home Ministry's response came after the Congress alleged the gazette notification issued on Monday is silent on the inclusion of caste in the exercise and asked whether this is another "U-turn" by the Central government.

"The notification to conduct census has been published in the Official Gazette today. The census will include caste enumeration as well."

Congress General Secretary In-charge of Communications, Jairam Ramesh, also asserted that the Centre must adopt the Telangana model for not just caste enumeration but also in bringing out detailed data on socio-economic parameters caste-wise.

The census will be carried out with a reference date of October 1, 2026, for snow-bound areas like Ladakh, and March 1, 2027, for the rest of the country, the notification said.

This will be the first caste-based enumeration since Independence.

The last comprehensive caste count was carried out by the British between 1881 and 1931.

Caste was excluded from census operations in Independent India.

The decision to include it in the upcoming census was taken by the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on April 30.

- IANS