Bhubaneswar: The first phase of the Census-House Listing Operations (HLO) has commenced across all 30 districts of Odisha as of Thursday, according to officials. This exercise is set to continue until May 15.

More than one lakh trained enumerators and over 17,000 supervisors have been mobilized for the month-long task, as stated by an officer from the Directorate of Census Operations, Odisha. These enumerators are now visiting their designated areas to map local houses.

After numbering the houses, they will conduct door-to-door visits to collect data for the house listing and housing census program using a mobile application. They will pose 33 questions, prepared by the Ministry of Home Affairs, to the head of each household, covering various types of residences, including residential and non-residential structures, jails, and malls.

District collectors and municipal commissioners are acting as Principal Census Officers, while Additional District Magistrates (ADMs) serve as District Census Officers. Executive officers of each urban local body and tahsildars have been designated as in-charge officers. The Revenue and Disaster Management Department is the nodal department overseeing the Census.

Primary school teachers have been appointed as enumerators, while high school teachers are serving as supervisors. Additionally, a self-enumeration option has been made available to citizens on an online platform (se.census.gov.in) from April 1 to 15, with over 2.22 lakh families already submitting their data. This self-enumeration data will be re-verified by enumerators during the house listing process.

The second phase, focusing on primary population enumeration, is scheduled to take place from February 9 to February 28, 2027.