The first phase of Census 2027 in Delhi, which started in the New Delhi district last week, picked up pace on Monday (April 20, 2026) as enumerators began a door-to-door survey for the House Listing and Housing Census.
The exercise commenced on April 16 in areas under the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and Delhi Cantonment jurisdictions. It comprises two stages — physical mapping and geotagging of houses, and a door-to-door survey. An official said the first stage has been completed and the exercise is likely to be concluded by May 15.
On Monday afternoon, teams of enumerators — all government school teachers — fanned out into various localities in the New Delhi district.
At Sanjay Camp, a jhuggi-jhopri (JJ) colony in Chanakyapuri, 10 enumerators have been assigned to cover 2,332 households.
After finishing their school duties in Moti Bagh and Bapu Dham, the teachers arrived at the colony around 2.30 p.m. They began the survey, entering responses into the Housing Listing Operations mobile application on their smartphones. Each enumerator is required to survey 10 households daily.
Moving through narrow lanes lined with closely packed homes, the enumerators were met mostly by women, many of whom chose to respond from behind curtains.
“The kitchen is considered the basic unit of a household. If a building has multiple residents, a family is defined as members who share a kitchen,” said an enumerator.
Unique number
Each household is assigned a unique census number, painted in red on doors or walls where formal house numbers were absent.
The enumerators received a mixed response at Sanjay Camp. While Ahmad Khan, in his 60s, answered questions without asking about the survey’s purpose, 20-year-old Renu was less forthcoming. However, after being told that the questions were part of “janaganana (Census)”, she answered all the questions.
The survey includes 33 questions covering topics such as the materials used in housing, sources of drinking water, types of cooking fuel, access to the Internet, and household composition, among others. Registering each entry takes about five to ten minutes, depending on connectivity, said an enumerator.
“If the network is slow or the app doesn’t load, we note responses on paper and upload them later,” said one of the enumerators, who carried printed sheets with columns to record household details such as family members, social category, mobile numbers, and vehicles, along with an instruction manual.
Wearing caps and identity cards to identify themselves as Census officials, the enumerators work from 2.30 p.m. to 6 p.m., or until they meet their daily target.
If residents are unavailable or unwilling to respond, the enumerators are required to revisit the house.
Meanwhile, three nearby JJ clusters — B.R. Camp, Masjid Camp and D.I.D. Camp — which had received eviction notices earlier this year, with a deadline of March 6, and were allotted rehabilitation flats in Savda Ghevra, have also been included in the exercise, as residents continue to live there, an official said.
Officials said that the digital layout mapping will be updated after the door-to-door survey is finalised to check for discrepancies.
