- a.fully conducted through door-to-door manual enumeration.
- b.digital, paperless census using electronic data collection methods.
- c.census conducted only through postal questionnaires without fieldworkers.
- d.census limited to urban areas using satellite imagery only.
Answer: (B) digital, paperless census using electronic data collection methods.
Answer as of 2024 — this may have changed since.
Census 2027, India's 16th census and the 8th since Independence, is the first to be conducted by digital means: enumerators record data on a mobile app and households can self-enumerate through an online portal. It has two phases, the Houselisting and Housing Census (April to September 2026) and Population Enumeration (February 2027), with the reference date 00:00 hours of 1 March 2027 (1 October 2026 for Ladakh and the snow-bound areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand). It will also record caste for the first time since 1931. The census is taken under the Census Act, 1948 by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner (Ministry of Home Affairs); the last one was in 2011, the 2021 round having been postponed. Options A, C and D describe methods that are not being used, since enumerators still visit households but with phones instead of paper schedules.