Overview

• The 128th Amendment Act, 2023 requires reserving one-third of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies after delimitation based on the first census conducted post-enactment.
• An official gazette notification on June 16 will launch the nationwide census in two phases, using October 1, 2026 as the reference date for snow-bound regions and March 1, 2027 for the rest of the country.
• Once census data is published, Parliament must enact a Delimitation Act to form a commission charged with redrawing constituency boundaries before the 2029 polls.
• Southern states have warned that updated population figures could cost them seats, prompting Home Minister Amit Shah and other senior officials to guarantee that their current representation will be preserved on a pro-rata basis.
• The census will deploy mobile apps in 16 languages, Aadhaar verification, biometric collection and AI tools to accelerate enumeration and data integration.