NOB-Bharat news:  The central government has decided to conduct the 16^th census of the country in February 2027, along with the caste census, which will be completed by the end of the same month. For this, March 1^st, 2027, has been decided as the reference date, and the census will be completed the day before that, 2027 February 28, at 12 midnight.This time, a key change will take place in the census. For the first time after almost seven decades, caste-wise details will also be collected. To this end, the government has said that this process will be carried out in two phases as per the Census Act, 1948, and the Census Rules, 1990.This process will start earlier in some special areas. The census will start from October 2026, especially in snow-covered areas such as Ladakh, parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where simultaneous enumeration is not possible.The decision to include caste details in the census was confirmed by Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnav after a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs on April 30^th 2025. He said the move aims to bring transparency and uniformity at the national level.Some states have conducted caste surveys in a transparent manner, but others have not. These discrepancies have given rise to doubts and have the potential to disrupt social harmony, Vaishnav said.The last census in India was conducted in 2011. After that, all the arrangements for the census to be held in 2021 were completed and the field work was supposed to start from April 1^st, 2020, but it was postponed indefinitely due to the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. The 2011 census was conducted in two phases. The house-to-house enumeration and the housing enumeration were conducted from April to September 2010, and the population enumeration was conducted in February 2011.The inclusion of caste details in the upcoming census is being considered a historic development. The last comprehensive caste-wise census was conducted during the British rule between 1881 and 1931. In 2011, the UPA government undertook the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) and although the information was collected, the data was not fully published or used.Poonam Muttreja, executive director of the Population Foundation of India, has previously argued that caste enumeration is essential to uncover deep-rooted structural inequalities in society and to formulate inclusive policies.