Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir has completed the first phase of Census 2027, the House Listing Operations (HLO), with 100 per cent digital data collection, Chief Secretary Atal Dulloo said on Thursday while reviewing the progress of the nationwide exercise.
The achievement was reviewed during the fifth meeting of the Union Territory-Level Census Coordination Committee (UTLCCC), chaired by the Chief Secretary. The meeting was attended by Director, Census Operations, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, Amit Sharma, senior administrative secretaries and officials of the Directorate of Census Operations.
According to an official statement, the month-long House Listing Operations were conducted from June 1 to June 30 across all districts of the Union Territory through a completely paperless and technology-driven process.
The Chief Secretary appreciated the efforts of the Directorate of Census Operations, district administrations and thousands of field functionaries for completing the exercise within the stipulated timeframe. He called upon all stakeholder departments to maintain the same momentum during the remaining phases of Census 2027.
During the meeting, Amit Sharma informed that 24,071 House Listing Blocks were created across 295 Census Charges for the exercise. A total of 30 Master Trainers, 614 Field Trainers and 29,269 enumerators and supervisors, including reserve staff, were trained through 813 training batches before the field operations commenced.
More than 27,000 digital Census kits were distributed across the Union Territory to facilitate the exercise, while reserve equipment was kept available to meet any contingency. The meeting was informed that special efforts were made to ensure coverage of migratory populations and households in remote areas.
The Chief Secretary also directed district administrations to ensure timely payment of honorarium to enumerators, supervisors and other field staff within the current month.
Reviewing the next phase of the exercise, the meeting was informed that work on the District Census Handbooks (DCHBs), containing village and town-level demographic, socio-economic and infrastructure data, would begin immediately. The field work for these handbooks is expected to be completed by October 2026 following the conclusion of population enumeration in snow-bound areas.
Preparations for the second phase of Census 2027, involving population enumeration in snow-bound and inaccessible areas, were also reviewed. The exercise is scheduled for September 2026, with training of field staff to be completed by the end of August.
According to the statement, the number of notified snow-bound areas has increased significantly since the 2011 Census. A total of 1,103 villages and three municipal areas spread across 16 districts have been identified for advance population enumeration, compared to 546 villages during the previous Census, to ensure coverage before the onset of winter.
