Jammu, Aug. 12 -- Ladakh is set to become the first Union Territory or state in the country where population enumeration under Census 2027 will be 100% completed, with self-enumeration scheduled from August 17 to 31. The Census 2027 reference date for the Himalayan region has been fixed at 00:00 hours on October 1, 2026. "Census 2027 will take off in Ladakh in a sense that self enumeration [SE] for Ladakh as well as 16 snow-bound districts of J&K (partially) will start on August 17 till August 31, like it happened previously for HLO [Houselisting and Housing Census Operation] from May 17 to 31st," said Chief Principal Census Officer and Director, Census Operations, J&K and Ladakh, Amit Sharma. Sharma informed that immediately after SE, the second phase of census will take place for Ladakh and J&K. "After that we will have population enumeration (PE) from September 1 to 30 for Ladakh as well as J&K. It will happen along with few snow bound areas of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. They will be going on simultaneously and partially, but technically speaking, Ladakh will be the first state or UT in the country where this exercise [PE] will be completed 100% because Ladakh is all snow bound," said Sharma. The Census 2027 reference date for Ladakh UT will be October 1, 2026 00:00 hours whereas for J&K and rest of the country their reference date is most likely to be March 1, 2027, he said. This way, Ladakh shall emerge as the first UT/state that shall complete the entire Census activity by the end of September this year, he said. For security forces in Ladakh, Sharma informed that they have printed sufficient number of paper schedules. "Since locations of the defence personnel cannot be geo-tagged, security forces in Ladakh will be covered through special charges.. They have their separate charge officers," he said and added that his department has started a training programme for special charges for the ITBP (Indo-Tibetan Border Police) from Tuesday. The Director Census Operations said human resource was the biggest manpower it has to deal with the exercise "We have to properly put in place our enumerators and supervisors. However, this time the deployment is more and we are imparting good training so that everything happens smoothly and Ladakh sets an example for the nation."...