Ranchi

The first phase of Census 2027 officially commenced in Jharkhand on Saturday, with field teams beginning house-listing operations and collection of household-related data across the state, officials said.

The month-long exercise will continue until June 14, during which trained census personnel will conduct door-to-door visits in both urban and rural areas.

According to a statement issued by Jharkhand’s Directorate of Census Operations, the survey is being conducted across all 24 districts, covering 51 urban local bodies, 264 administrative blocks, and a total of 32,459 villages.

To carry out the large-scale exercise, nearly 76,000 government personnel have been deployed, including 1,276 field trainers, 61,042 enumerators, and 10,386 supervisors.

Director of Census Operations Prabhat Kumar said the initial two to three days will be devoted to preparing layout maps of assigned areas and marking residential units before the actual enumeration begins.

“After the mapping process is completed, enumerators will start collecting household information through field visits,” Kumar said.

Officials said the first phase of Census 2027 will cover 33 questions related to housing conditions, family composition, access to civic amenities, and ownership of household assets.

Before the launch of field operations, residents were given an opportunity to submit their details digitally through a self-enumeration process conducted from May 1 to May 15.

According to official data, 1,88,743 families across the state completed self-enumeration during the period.

Among districts, Ranchi recorded the highest participation with 50,569 families, followed by East Singhbhum with 20,384 households and Hazaribagh with 11,914.

During the ongoing field survey, officials will collect details related to housing structure, including materials used for flooring, walls, and roofing, ownership status, number of rooms, number of married couples in the household, access to drinking water, sanitation facilities, sources of energy, cooking fuel, and ownership of assets such as radios, televisions, internet access, mobile phones, two-wheelers, and cars.

Officials said the second phase of Census 2027, which will focus on population enumeration and demographic profiling, is scheduled to be conducted from February 9 to February 28 next year.

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The next phase is expected to generate detailed socio-economic, demographic, and cultural data for every individual in the state, officials added.