Primary and high school teachers make up a sizeable section of the enumerators who will carry out house-to-house visits for the Houselisting and Housing Census, the phase I of Census 2027, in July this year in Kerala

The supervisors have been drawn from higher secondary and high school teachers. Lower division and upper division clerks also have been included as enumerators and supervisors, Census officials said.

The deployment of large numbers of teachers for the Census operation had sparked a concern that schools would face a shortage of teaching staff in July.

Responding to the issue, K. Biju, Secretary, General Administration Department, and Nodal Officer for the Census 2027 in Kerala, said on Monday that the State government will look into the issue. Measures such as ‘duty off’ can be considered, but the government has not finalised any decision yet, he told a press conference held in connection with the start of the self-enumeration phase of the Phase 1 - Houselisting and Housing Census (HLO) - from Tuesday (June 19).

Teachers make up a sizeable section of the approximately 61,282 enumerators and 10,189 supervisors who will be deployed for the house-to-house visits planned under the Phase from July 1 to July 30 this year.

During the 2011 Census too, several schools had faced a shortage of teachers.

Census officials estimate that enumerators would have to cover between 150 to 200 houses in Phase 1.

The training sessions for enumerators and supervisors are expected to be completed by June 23 ahead of the HLO.

Enumerators are drawn largely from the teaching community given the elaborate nature of the queries.

Census officials expect that the 15-day self-enumeration phase starting Tuesday, where the public can access the Census portal https://se.census.gov.in and upload the replies on their own, would simplify the enumerators’ work to a large extent.

Nevertheless, enumerators would still have to visit the houses to verify the data before uploading the final data.