Patna: Preparations for India’s Census 2027 have gathered pace in Bihar, with the state government confirming that the first phase of the exercise will begin in April 2026 and run through September.
At a meeting of the state-level Census Coordination Committee in Patna, chaired by the chief secretary, Pratyaya Amrit, senior officials reviewed administrative, technical and coordination arrangements for the nationwide exercise. The meeting was held at the old secretariat and attended by representatives from all concerned departments.
Officials said the census would be conducted in two phases. The first phase will focus on house listing and housing enumeration and will be carried out over 30 designated days between April and September 2026. A formal notification for this phase will be published in the state gazette after its completion.
The state government also clarified that there will be no changes to the boundaries or jurisdictions of rural or urban administrative units during the census period. Under a boundary delimitation notification issued by the Union government, administrative boundaries in Bihar will remain frozen from December 31, 2025 to March 31, 2027. Census operations will be carried out across the existing 534 rural and 265 urban administrative units, including one cantonment board.
The first phase of the census will include 33 questions covering housing conditions, usage, access to facilities, ownership of assets and consumption of staple food grains. These questions were officially notified by the central government on January 23, 2026. The state’s revenue and land reforms department has been designated as the nodal agency for implementing this phase.
Officials said geo-spatial technology would play a central role in census planning and execution. The chief secretary recently held a separate meeting with TP Singh, director general of the Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG-N), to discuss the use of geospatial data and analytics under the Prime Minister Gati Shakti portal.
Amrit said improved data collection at the initial stages of large infrastructure projects – including roads, railways, power and irrigation – could help prevent long-term planning and implementation issues.
Addressing a visiting study group from the National Defence College on the sidelines of the meeting, the chief secretary said Bihar had made notable economic progress over the past 15 to 20 years despite persistent challenges, attributing the gains to governance reforms and development initiatives.
