Census Town UPSC relevant
A census town is a settlement that the census treats as urban on demographic-economic criteria even though it has no urban local body and is legally a village.
The three tests, unchanged since 1961 and applied on previous-census data, are: (a) population of at least 5,000; (b) at least 75 per cent of the male main working population engaged in non-agricultural pursuits; and (c) population density of at least 400 persons per sq km. Census towns are where India's 'hidden urbanisation' shows up — their number jumped sharply between 2001 and 2011. For Census 2027, PIB's backgrounder lists 4,580 census towns in the frozen frame (up from 3,892 in 2011); the 2027 results will in turn generate the list used in the following census.