Census 2027: Private School Teachers and Trust Members Included for Enumeration Duties

UPDATE - follow-up to Census 2027: Govt. opens enumerator roles to private teachers, institutions, trust and society members: The Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India issued a notification on Friday to broaden the category of people who can work as Census enumerators. Till now, mostly state government officials and government school teachers carried out this work. The updated rules now allow teachers from aided and unaided private schools, societies, and trusts to be appointed.

Court Interventions

Before this notification, several private teachers in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Haryana moved court after state governments asked them to do enumeration duty. On Friday, the Punjab and Haryana High Court stayed two Haryana government communications that sought teacher details for the Census. This granted interim relief to private unaided schools from deploying their staff. Earlier in May, the Bombay High Court gave similar protection to groups representing over 500 private unaided and minority schools in Maharashtra. Those court orders stayed notices, appointment orders, and coercive steps like FIRs against teaching and non-teaching staff who failed to report for Census duties.

Scale and Schedule

A senior government official stated that roughly 34 lakh enumerators are needed for the Population Enumeration. This is the second and penultimate phase of the Census, which includes a set of 40 questions. The official noted that the job cannot be finished in time using only government school teachers. Door-to-door enumeration for this second phase will happen in four poll-bound states from December 1, 2026, to January 4, 2027. These states are Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, and Punjab. The exercise will take place in the rest of the country in February 2027. This marks the first digital Census and the first time caste is counted in independent India outside of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

Data Privacy

Addressing concerns about privacy and data protection since private persons will use personal phones and mobile apps to collect details, a Census official explained how the system works. The official stated that all data is centralised and backed by adequate checks to ensure privacy. Once a task is finished, all data is deleted from the enumerator's end and stored safely in a central server. In Ladakh and snow-bound areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh, where both phases ended on September 30, enumerators spent 30 to 60 minutes on average per household to collate details on the app.

Context

The Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India oversees the decadal population count in the country, managing massive administrative logistics to cover over a billion citizens. Expanding the workforce pool is often necessary when existing government staff face heavy workloads or legal pushback from institutions tasked with education rather than routine administrative surveys.