Census 2027: tax scrutiny fears, low awareness hamper door-to-door enumeration across city

Three weeks into the House Listing and Housing Operations drive under the first phase of Census 2027, enumerators across the city’s 13 districts are running into a familiar obstacle: locked doors, wary landlords, and residents reluctant to be counted.

While fears of tax scrutiny are prompting some property owners to block access to tenants, low awareness among migrant workers is also slowing the pace of the door-to-door exercise, several enumerators told The Hindu.

Meanwhile, officials have issued show-cause notices to enumerators who either refused to participate in the exercise or remained absent without informing supervisors.

“This is a time-bound exercise and challenges such as these, along with difficulties faced by field staff, affect the pace of enumeration,” said the coordinator for south and old Delhi, Anu Gupta.

Around 27.43 lakh households have been surveyed across 44,964 of 45,779 House Listing Blocks (HLBs) since the door-to-door exercise began in the areas governed by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, as per data accessed by The Hindu.

“Some enumerators are still finalising the physical mapping work of their HLBs while others have not yet synced responses collected from households on the House Listing Operations app,” a Census officer said, adding, “Overall, the progress has been satisfactory as the work is continuing.”

The exercise in the New Delhi district concluded on May 15, with 63,050 households identified in areas under the jurisdiction of the New Delhi Municipal Council and the Delhi Cantonment Board.

Ms. Gupta said they have been receiving complaints that enumerators have had to make multiple visits because landlords refuse to allow them to survey tenants living on their properties or deny that tenants stay there.

“They fear that the information may be shared with the Income Tax Department,” she said.

“Whenever such episodes occur, senior officials have to intervene and explain that data collected are confidential and cannot be used by any authority for purposes other than the Census,” she said.