Census Operations officers appointed for Himachal, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry

New Delhi: The Centre has appointed Director of Census Operations (DCO) and Director of Citizen Registration (DCR) for Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, a government order said Thursday.

M Sundaresh Babu, a 2012-batch IAS officer of the Karnataka cadre, has been appointed as DCO and DCR for Tamil Nadu and Puducherry while his batchmate from the Odisha cadre IAS officer, Nikhil Pavan Kalyan, has been appointed for Odisha in the same position, it said.

Deep Shikha Sharma, a 2011-batch Indian Forest Service officer from the AGMUT cadre will be DCO/DCR for Himachal Pradesh, it said.

Babu and Sharma have been appointed with effect from June 23 while Kalyan has been appointed with effect from June 16, the order published in the gazette on Thursday said.

All three officers have been posted till December 31, 2025 or till further orders, it said.

The DCOs appointed for the Census in each state will conduct the exercise in their jurisdiction under the guidelines and supervision of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India.

The 2027 Census will be the 16th decennial Census of India since 1872, when the first systematic Census was conducted throughout the country according to a uniform pattern.

This will be the eighth successive exercise conducted after Independence. The exercise could not be undertaken in 2021 because of COVID-19.

The Census is a two-phase exercise. House-listing operation, housing conditions, assets and amenities of each household will be collected beginning April 1, 2026 in phase one.

Subsequently, population enumeration, demographic, socio-economic, cultural and other details of every person in each household will be collected in the second phase, which is scheduled to start from February 1, 2027, according to a letter issued by Registrar General of India issued in June.

Caste enumeration will also be done in the Census, a government statement had said.

Over 34 lakh enumerators and supervisors and around 1.3 lakh Census functionaries would be deployed for Census work.