Disability groups reject 9-category Census 2027 framework as inadequate

Disability rights organisations have condemned the proposed nine-category disability enumeration framework for Census 2027, saying it legally fails to capture the 21 distinct disabilities recognised under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, 2016. The National Platform for Rights of Disabled, backed by 405 signatories, warned this will produce inaccurate data and render entire groups of disabled persons invisible in official statistics.

The groups noted that Census 2027 will record disability under nine headings: seeing, hearing, speech, mobility, intellectual disability, mental illness, acid attack, chronic neurological disease, and blood disorder. They argue this excludes conditions such as autism, specific learning disabilities, dwarfism, leprosy-cured persons, and multiple disabilities including deafblindness, while lumping cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson's disease into broader categories. Three distinct blood disorders, thalassemia, haemophilia, and sickle-cell disease, are reduced to one category.

The second phase of Census 2027 enumeration began on August 17 in snow-bound areas, with door-to-door counting across the rest of India scheduled from September 1 to September 30, 2026.