New Delhi, June 17 -- The Centre on Monday issued a notification for conducting the 16th Census, thereby formally initiating the preparatory work for the largest population counting exercise after a gap of 16 years. "....the Central government hereby declares that a census of the population of India shall be taken during the year 2027. The reference date for the said census shall be 00.00 hours of the 1st day of March, 2027, except for the union territory of Ladakh and snow-bound non-synchronous areas of the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir and the states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand", said the notification issued by the Office of Registrar General of India or ORGI. "In respect of the UT of Ladakh and snow-bound non-synchronous areas of the UT of Jammu and Kashmir and the states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the reference date shall be 00:00 hours of the 1st day of October, 2026," it added. Customarily, once a gazette notification for intent of conducting Census is issued, there are various preparatory areas on which detailed discussions take place, including with data users, training of enumerators, etc but officials familiar with upcoming Census said "most of these activities have already been completed since between 2021 and now". Last week, the government announced that the much-delayed Census exercise, which will include caste enumeration, will be completed by March 1, 2027. Officials have said that while the data collection would be over by March 1, 2027, the entire exercise to collate the data and publish it will take two to three more years. Officials said that all the states have already constituted Census Coordination Committees (CCCs) under the respective chief secretaries. "As the Census exercise was originally to take place in 2020, ORGI had already written to states/UTs for forming CCCs in April 2019," said an officer, adding that the committees have various departments like revenue, local administration, municipal corporations, rural development and panchayats, planning education, etc for conducting and monitoring different phases of Census. Also, the pre-test for Census - which is conducted prior to each Census encompassing all facets to check feasibility of all questions, methodologies, logistics arrangements, processing of data, etc - was also done in 2019. "The pre-test for Census 2021, which will now be called Census-2027, was conducted in 2019 in all 36 states/UTs across 76 districts in 90 areas (54 rural and 36 urban) covering a population of 26 lakh, in which around 6,000 enumerators and 1,100 supervisors from respective states/UTs were involved in data collection and supervision," said a second officer cited above. The ministry of home affairs said on Sunday that the 16th Census will involve about 34 lakh enumerators and supervisors. Besides, it said, around 1.3 lakh Census functionaries would be deployed for the exercise. It also said that the upcoming census "will be conducted through digital means using mobile applications" and "provision of self-enumeration would also be made available to the people". The 16th Census will be conducted in two phases. In phase one i.e. house-listing operation (HLO), the housing conditions, assets and amenities of each household will be collected. Subsequently, in the second phase i.e. population enumeration (PE), the demographic, socio-economic, cultural and other details of every person in each household will be collected. An officer said that for the upcoming Census exercise, two separate mobile applications and a web portal have been developed for data collection along with its monitoring on real or near-real time basis. "The mobile apps have been developed in English and 15 regional languages as per requirement of different states," he said. Earlier, on Sunday, Union home minister Amit Shah had reviewed the preparations for the Census. The ministry of home affairs said after the meeting that the Census will have the option of self-enumeration by residents. The SE portal, according to officials, will be closed for changes, a few days prior to the census exercise start date. The MHA also said on Sunday that "very stringent data security measures would be kept in place to ensure data security at the time of collection, transmission and storage (for Census)". The 2027 census is being held after a decade-and-a-half and will officially confirm India's status as the most-populous nation. The Census forms an important node of policy making in India as it is the principal source of official socioeconomic and demographic data. It will enumerate caste for the first time since 1931 and will be the basis for conducting the delimitation exercise....