In a first, the Union government has expanded the definition of “any person” who could be appointed as Census enumerators authorising the appointment of private school teachers and members of “institutions, societies and trusts”.
Though the category of “any person” existed in Census Rules, 1990, the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India (RG&CCI) notification in the official gazette on Friday (October 16, 2026) broadened the category of persons who could be engaged as enumerators. Till now, mostly government school teachers, revenue and other State government officials were being engaged to carry out the enumeration work.
Legal pushback
In the first phase of the latest Census with the House Listing Operations (HLO), several private teachers in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Haryana, who were asked by the State government to carry out the enumeration duty, moved court over the decision.
On Friday, the Punjab and Haryana High Court stayed two Haryana government communications seeking details of teachers for the Census, granting interim relief to private unaided schools from deploying their staff for the exercise.
Earlier in May, the Bombay High Court had granted interim protection to associations representing over 500 private unaided and minority schools in Maharashtra, staying all notices, appointment orders, and coercive steps such as First Information Reports (FIRs) issued against their teaching and non-teaching staff for failing to report for Census duties.
Need more enumerators: official
A senior government official said that around 34 lakh enumerators are required for the Population Enumeration, which is the second and penultimate phase of Census with a set of 40 questions, and the job cannot be completed in time only with the engagement of government school teachers.
The door-to-door enumeration of the second phase of Census exercise will be conducted in the four poll-bound States of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Punjab from December 1, 2026 to January 4, 2027, ahead of the rest of the country where the exercise will be conducted in February 2027.
This is the first digital Census and the first to enumerate caste in independent India, other than Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe.
When asked about the privacy and protection of data of respondents as private persons are being engaged and the enumerators are required to collect the data through mobile apps on their personal phones, a Census official said: “All data is centralised and there are adequate checks to ensure data privacy. All data is deleted from the enumerator’s end, once the task is completed and the data is stored in the central server.”
“In the Census Rules, 1990, in Rule 3, in the Table, against serial number 5, for the entries under Column 2, the following entries shall be substituted, namely :- “(i) Teachers of any educational institution of the Government, local authority, aided or unaided private bodies, societies or trusts. (ii) Clerks or any official of the Central Government, State Government, local authority or establishment (including public sector undertakings, statutory bodies, banks, companies, institutions, societies and trusts). (iii) Any person, as the State Government or the Union territory Administration may consider suitable, to perform the duties as an Enumerator,” the notification said.
The population enumeration phase has a set of 40 questions and in Ladakh and snow-bound areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh where both the phases concluded on September 30, an enumerator spent 30 to 60 minutes on an average in each household to collate the details on the app, a government official said.
On August 14, the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India notified 40 questions to be asked during second phase, adding 13 new questions or data fields that were not part of the Census 2011 questionnaire. The questions that have been added for the first time are spouse’s name, nationality, father’s particulars and mother’s particulars, digital literacy, permanent residential address, place of Covid-19 vaccination, number of bank accounts, passport number, driving licence availability and mobile, Aadhaar and voter ID numbers, if available.