Overview
- The state government has set an operational calendar that opens self-enumeration on August 1 for about two weeks, moves to house-listing visits in mid-August, and aims to complete the Census exercise by the end of February 2027.
- On Friday, May 29, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari convened Principal Census Officers at Nabanna to formally launch state preparations, release toll-free helplines and assign administrative roles for recruitment and training.
- Census 2027 in West Bengal will use a digital self-enumeration portal (se.census.gov.in), a House Listing Operation (HLO) mobile app and central monitoring portals to let households submit details online and enumerators upload verified data to a central server.
- Adhikari accused the previous Trinamool Congress administration of delaying preparations and linked the drive to assessing alleged demographic shifts caused by infiltration across an unfenced roughly 600 km border with Bangladesh, while officials stress the exercise is administrative and governed by the Census Act.
- Key operational tasks remain: finalising and testing the mobile apps, recruiting and training thousands of enumerators, finishing mapping, and coordinating with central Census platforms so West Bengal can catch up with other states that began Phase I earlier.