Jharkhand freezes boundaries of administrative units ahead of census

Ranchi, Nov 24 (PTI) The Jharkhand government issued an order on Monday, freezing boundaries of administrative units in preparation for the upcoming census.

There will be no change to the administrative boundaries of districts, subdivisions, blocks, municipal corporations, municipal councils, nagar panchayats, cantonment boards, wards, panchayats and villages between January 1, 2026, and March 31, 2027, said an official statement.

Chief Minister Hemant Soren also directed that the information and desired notification regarding the changes in the jurisdictional boundaries till December 31, 2025, be forwarded to the Census Operations Directorate in Ranchi, it said.

The census will be carried out with a reference date of October 1, 2026, in snow-bound areas such as Ladakh, and March 1, 2027, in the rest of the country.

The census will be conducted in two phases. In phase one, Housing Listing Operation (HLO) will be undertaken, and housing conditions, assets and amenities of each household will be collected.

In the second phase, Population Enumeration (PE) will be done, and the demographic, socio-economic, cultural and other details of every person in each household will be collected.

This census is the 16th census since the exercise started and the eighth after Independence. The last such exercise was carried out in 2011. PTI SAN SAN SOM