Self-enumeration for census in Meghalaya starts today

Shillong: Meghalaya will roll out self-enumeration for Census 2027 from Friday as part of India’s first fully digital census to be conducted through mobile applications and the Census Management and Monitoring System portal.Director of census operations, Meghalaya, Biswajit Pegu said residents can opt to self-enumerate via an online portal between May 1 and May 15.“This facility allows individuals to fill in their household details, which will subsequently be verified by enumerators during house-to-house visits,” Pegu said.Around 9,000 enumerators and supervisors will be deployed across the state, backed by a multi-layer supervision mechanism aimed at ensuring data accuracy.The census will be conducted in two phases. After the self-enumeration window, House Listing Operations (HLO) will be carried out from May 16 to June 14, 2026, with enumerators collecting information on housing conditions, assets and basic amenities through a structured 33-question schedule.Phase II — population enumeration — will be held in February 2027, with March 1, 2027 set as the reference date.Subhasish Chatterjee, joint director, directorate of census operations, Meghalaya, said a national toll-free helpline “1855” has been launched to assist citizens with queries on the census process, including house-listing operations and population enumeration.For census purposes, Meghalaya’s administrative boundaries have been frozen as of Dec 31, 2025. The exercise will be conducted under the supervision of deputy commissioners as principal census officers, supported by charge officers, supervisors and enumerators.