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The Standing Committee on Housing and Urban Affairs (2025-26), chaired by Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy, considered and adopted its draft report on 'Census Criteria for Defining Urban Areas' on 16 September 2026.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs told the committee that the criteria the Registrar General of India uses to classify Census Towns are decades old and no longer capture India's real urban transformation.
A Census Town must simultaneously have at least 5,000 people, a density of at least 400 persons per sq km, and at least 75% of male main workers in non-agricultural work.
Census Towns are counted as urban but are still governed by panchayats, so they get neither municipal planning powers nor urban funding.
Census 2011 counted 7,935 towns - 4,041 statutory towns and 3,894 Census Towns - with 31.2% of Indians living in urban areas.
| Feature | Statutory Town | Census Town |
|---|---|---|
| How it is created | By a state government notification setting up a municipal body | By the Registrar General of India applying the census test at enumeration |
| Who governs it | Municipal corporation, municipality, nagar panchayat, cantonment board or notified area committee | Gram panchayat, under Part IX of the Constitution |
| Planning and building powers | Master plan, building bye-laws, town planning powers | None, so growth is effectively unregulated |
| Funding stream | Urban schemes and municipal taxes | Rural funds, which are not designed for sewerage, piped water or urban transport |
| Number in Census 2011 | 4,041 | 3,894 |
Inserted Part IXA, Articles 243P to 243ZG, on municipalities, giving urban local bodies constitutional status, fixed five-year terms, State Election Commissions and State Finance Commissions. A Census Town gets none of this because it has no municipality.
Requires the Governor, by public notification and having regard to population, density, the revenue generated for local administration, the percentage of employment in non-agricultural activities and other factors, to constitute a nagar panchayat for a transitional area, a municipal council for a smaller urban area and a municipal corporation for a larger urban area. Converting a Census Town into a statutory town is therefore a STATE decision, not a census one.
The statute under which the decennial census is conducted. The Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India operates under it, within the Ministry of Home Affairs, and applies the urban classification at the time of enumeration.
Conducts the census, maintains the Civil Registration System and the National Population Register, and applies the Census Town criteria at enumeration
Nodal ministry for urban development and urban schemes; told the committee that the classification criteria are outdated and understate India's urbanisation
Departmentally related standing committee of Parliament that examines the ministry's demands for grants, bills and selected subjects; adopted its report on census criteria for defining urban areas on 16 September 2026
The three-part urban test is crystallised in the Census of India under Census Commissioner Asok Mitra.
The criteria settle into the form still in use, and have not been revised since.
Census counts 1,362 Census Towns, holding about 21 million people.
Census Towns nearly treble to 3,894 with 54.3 million people; total towns reach 7,935 and the urban share 31.2%.
Administrative boundaries frozen for Census 2027.
Standing Committee on Housing and Urban Affairs adopts its draft report on census criteria for defining urban areas.
Population enumeration for Census 2027, using the retained 2011 urban definition.
GS Paper 1 > Urbanisation, their problems and their remedies; GS Paper 2 > Devolution of powers and finances to local levels
General Awareness > Indian Polity and Census facts
A settlement that meets the Census of India's urban thresholds but has no urban local body and is administered by a gram panchayat.
A place with a notified municipal body - corporation, municipality, nagar panchayat, cantonment board or notified area committee - irrespective of its population.
In census terminology, a person who worked for six months or more in the reference year; the non-agricultural test counts only MALE main workers.