Overview
- On Friday, October 16, 2026, the Registrar General published the Census (Amendment) Rules, 2026, explicitly adding teachers of aided and unaided private schools, clerks, officials and any person a state or UT considers suitable to the list of eligible enumerators.
- The change responds to a government estimate that about 34 lakh enumerators are needed for the population enumeration, which is the first digital census and includes caste data.
- Courts have already intervened: the Punjab and Haryana High Court stayed two Haryana communications seeking teacher lists on October 8 and the case is listed for further hearing on April 29, 2027, while other benches including Allahabad and the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court have granted interim relief to private-school staff.
- Census officials say data will be centralised and deleted from enumerators’ devices after upload, but using private-school staff and other non-government persons has raised public and legal concerns about institutional autonomy and respondent privacy.
- The amendment takes effect immediately but the coming weeks will test its practical impact as states decide whether to seek private staff, courts rule on challenges and administrators prepare for staggered enumeration in poll-bound states from December 1 to January 4 and nationwide in February 2027.