Amendments to the Census Rules, 1990 gained legal force on Friday, allowing states and Union territories to deploy teachers from both aided and unaided private schools as census enumerators — an outcome that followed a series of high court orders that had placed government requisition directives for those workers under judicial stays.
Under a gazette notification bearing the name of Registrar General of India Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan, state governments and Union territories hold the authority to designate teachers, clerks, and other eligible individuals as enumerators for census purposes.
According to the official document, those eligible for appointment as census enumerators span a broad range of personnel: teaching staff at government-run, local authority-funded, aided, and unaided private schools, colleges, and institutions managed by societies or trusts; clerical and administrative workers employed across central and state government bodies, local authorities, public sector undertakings, statutory organisations, banks, companies, and allied institutions; and any additional individuals whom the relevant state government or Union territory administration judges appropriate for the role.
Rulings handed down by multiple high courts nationwide had shielded teachers employed by aided and unaided private institutions from being assigned enumeration work under the ongoing Census.
A stay on two Haryana government communications seeking details of teachers available for census duty was granted by Justice Harpreet Singh Brar, acting on a petition brought before the Punjab and Haryana High Court by the Haryana Progressive Schools Conference, which had contested the requisitioning and deployment of staff from private unaided schools for that purpose. A hearing date of 29 April 2027 has been entered on the court's schedule.
At the heart of the petition lay a challenge to the government's authority: neither the Census Act of 1948 nor any rules drawn from it, the petitioner argued, provided lawful basis for pressing teaching staff at private unaided schools into service as enumerators or supervisors during census operations. According to the petition, Section 4A of the Census Act expressly envisions the deployment of local authority personnel for census-related duties, a category into which private unaided schools and their staff do not fall, given that such institutions lie outside the statutory boundaries of what constitutes a local authority.
That same month, a stay was placed by the Allahabad High Court on directions issued by the District Inspector of Schools in Gautam Budh Nagar — directions that had sought staff rosters, covering both teaching and non-teaching personnel, from aided and unaided institutions alike, ostensibly for census duty purposes — with the bench citing grounds broadly consistent with those applied in related proceedings. On a prima facie basis, the bench determined that personnel employed by private institutions — whether those bodies receive government aid or operate independently — fall outside the scope of local authorities, whose staffing obligations extend only to their own workforce.
During a hearing on the petition brought by Centre Point School teachers contesting a Nagpur Municipal Corporation Deputy Commissioner's directive assigning them to census enumeration and supervisory duties, the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court took note of claims that the Deputy Commissioner had put the school principal under threat of criminal proceedings should the directive go unheeded. A line of rulings from the Supreme Court, multiple high courts, and the Bombay High Court — all pointing in the same direction — led the bench to conclude that teaching and non-teaching staff at both aided and unaided schools are not available for deployment in election duties or census operations.
Structured across two distinct operational stages — an initial house-listing and housing survey, followed by a full population count — the 2027 Census marks the eighth such national exercise undertaken since independence. Planned for 2021, the once-a-decade population count was pushed back after the Covid outbreak disrupted preparations.
The Union Cabinet's approval of Rs 11,718 crore in funding will support a nationwide population survey described as the largest of its kind the country has carried out.
Voter rolls for Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, and the non-alpine portions of Uttarakhand are set to be counted between 1 December 2026 and 4 January 2027, a window shaped by the assembly elections those states are due to hold the following year. A formal notification from the Registrar General of India has put the household-enumeration fieldwork connected to Census 2027 on hold in Manipur.
Spanning the full month of September, the drill covered Ladakh alongside the snowbound, non-contiguous regions of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand. Across the remainder of the country, fieldwork is scheduled to get under way in February of next year, gathering household-level data on demographic, socio-cultural, and economic conditions alongside the migration patterns and fertility profiles of individual residents.
