PolicyCensus
Census rules widened to let private teachers and 'any person' work as enumerators
The amendment comes after two High Courts shielded private school teachers from census duty. Congress says it will turn Census 2027 into a jobs scheme for RSS and BJP workers.
Key points
- The Centre amended the Census Rules, 1990 on 16 October to let states appoint teachers of private schools as enumerators.
- States can now also appoint "any person" they consider suitable to the job.
- Jairam Ramesh called it a "Rozgar Guarantee Yojana" for RSS-BJP workers.
The Centre has widened the pool of people who can be drafted to count India’s population, amending the Census Rules, 1990 so that states and Union territories can appoint teachers of private schools, clerks of banks and companies, and “any person” they consider suitable as enumerators for Census 2027.
The notification, issued on Friday by Registrar General of India Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan, sets out three groups who can be made census officers to work as enumerators. The first is “teachers of any educational institution of the government, local authority, aided or unaided private bodies, societies or trusts”. The second covers clerks or officials of the central and state governments, local authorities, public sector undertakings, statutory bodies, banks, companies, institutions, societies and trusts. The third is “any person, as the state government or the Union territory administration may consider suitable”.
The court cases behind it
The change follows a run of High Court orders keeping private school teachers out of census work.
Earlier this month, Justice Harpreet Singh Brar of the Punjab and Haryana High Court stayed two Haryana government letters, dated 1 and 7 September, that sought details of teachers for census duty, to the extent they applied to private unaided schools. The petitioners, the Haryana Progressive Schools Conference, argued that neither the Census Act, 1948 nor its rules allowed the state to requisition private unaided school teachers, and that Section 4A of the Act covers only the staff of local authorities. The case is next listed on 29 April 2027.
In May, the Bombay High Court restrained Maharashtra from deploying teachers of private unaided and minority schools, granting interim relief to more than 500 schools. The court said the deployment disrupted academics and appeared to lack backing in the Census Act.
Congress alleges ‘mischief’
The Congress attacked the amendment on Saturday. “There is much mischief behind it,” party general secretary Jairam Ramesh said in a post on X.
Ramesh linked the notification to a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh training camp he said was held in Belagavi (Belgaum), Karnataka, from 10 to 12 July on Census 2027, and to the call for public inputs issued on 14 October by the Home Ministry’s High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes. “The only thing high level of this committee is the affiliation of its members to the RSS ecosystem. So we know where these inputs will come from,” he said.
“It is clear this is a Rozgar Guarantee Yojana for thousands of RSS/BJP workers. This will most certainly further contaminate an already subverted Census. Another institution is being destroyed. Like SIR, the Census will also be dangerously doctored,” Ramesh said, accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah of “diabolical designs”.
The government had not responded to the charge by Saturday evening.
Why it matters
Enumerators are the census officers who record the details of every household. Census 2027 is the first to be conducted digitally, with an option for people to enumerate themselves, and it will also record caste. Under the amended rules, the choice of who does that work now rests with each state and Union territory, with few limits on whom they can pick.