The Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India (RGI) is a permanent statutory institution under the Ministry of Home Affairs, responsible for generating demographic and population statistics. The office was established as a permanent organization in 1949 and became a permanent department of the central government in 1961, replacing the temporary administrative structures previously used for each census. This creation solved the problem of needing a continuous, systematic body to collect data for post-independence governance and five-year development plans.
The RGI's mechanism is rooted in two key pieces of legislation. It conducts the decennial Census of India under the Census Act, 1948, which authorizes the Census Commissioner to design schedules and supervise enumeration. It also oversees the Civil Registration System (CRS) for compulsory registration of births and deaths under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969. The RGI also manages the Sample Registration System (SRS) for vital statistics and maintains the National Population Register (NPR), which is developed under the Citizenship Act, 1955, and Citizenship Rules, 2003.
A significant recent change is the Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Act, 2023, which mandates digital registration of all births and deaths from October 1, 2023. Furthermore, the upcoming Census 2027 will be the first "Digital Census," utilizing mobile applications and offering a self-enumeration option. This census will also include comprehensive caste enumeration, a practice last undertaken in 1931.