First phase of Census 2027 in Odisha to begin on April 16: State Census Operations Joint Director

Jan 20, 2026

Bhubaneswar (Odisha) [India], January 20 : The houselisting operations for the Census 2027 will begin on April 16 and continue till May 15 in Odisha, State Census Operations Joint Director Hemanta Kumar Singh said on Tuesday.
Speaking to ANI, Singh said that one lakh enumerators will engage in the process of the census, which will be digitally conducted using a mobile application.
He said, "The revenue department of the state government has published the notification about the census for the housing listing operations of the Census 2027 to take place between April 16 and May 15, 2026. One lakh enumerators will be engaged in the process. On January 23, our Director and Chief Secretary will be attending a conference in New Delhi. We have completed almost all the jurisdictional changes. There will be no paperwork, and all the operations will be digital."
"This is the first phase of the operation, which will start on April 16. The officers will ask 34 questions and fill them out on the mobile app. The second phase of the census will start in February 2027, when we will start population enumeration. Caste census will also be conducted during this phase," Singh added.
The Union Cabinet had approved Census 2027 in December 2025 at a cost of Rs 11,718.24 crore. According to a press release by the Cabinet, the census will be conducted in two phases: Houselisting and Housing Census from April to September 2026 and Population Enumeration (PE) in February 2027
For the Union Territories of Ladakh and snow-bound non-synchronous areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the PE will be conducted in September 2026.
A mobile app will be used for data collection, and a Central portal for monitoring purposes. Census-as-a-service (CaaS) will deliver data to ministries in a clean, machine-readable and actionable format.
Census 2027 will be the 16th census in the country and the eighth after independence.