Houselisting & Housing Census (Phase 1)

What houselisting is

Houselisting is the census before the census: enumerators walk every street in India and list every building, census house and household, recording who lives where and in what conditions. It creates the frame that Phase 2 (Population Enumeration) works from — without a complete house list, enumerators could not guarantee that every person is counted exactly once.

The 33 questions

The houselisting schedule, notified in January 2026, carries 33 questions covering three groups: the building (use, condition, floor/wall/roof material), household amenities (drinking-water source, sanitation, electricity, kitchen and fuel, bathing facility) and household assets (radio, television, internet access, phone, vehicle ownership, banking access). See every question explained.

How the digital process worked

For the first time, households could self-enumerate online at se.census.gov.in during a 15-day window before their state's field operation, in any of 16 languages. Completing it generated a Self-Enumeration ID (SE ID) — households simply gave this ID to the visiting enumerator instead of repeating answers at the door. Enumerators captured everything else on the Census 2027 mobile app, with progress monitored in near real time through the Census Management & Monitoring System (CMMS). Around 82 lakh households had already used self-enumeration by May 1, 2026, the latest official cumulative figure.

The state-by-state window design

Rather than one national date, each state and UT chose a 30-day window inside April–September 2026 — staggering the load on training, logistics and the digital platform. The four snow-bound states/UTs went first (April–May 2026) because their Population Enumeration comes early, and Manipur goes last (September 1–30, 2026). By the government's August 12, 2026 Rajya Sabha reply, 31 states/UTs had already completed houselisting; ₹4,102 crore of the census budget had been released by then. The full state-by-state table with sources is below.