Old Census town criteria will not capture India’s urbanisation, Ministry tells House panel

The four-decade-old criteria used to classify Census Towns will not be able to capture the actual scale of urbanisation in India, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) told a parliamentary committee, arguing that the present rigid definition, which the Registrar General of India (RGI) has decided to continue with despite the Ministry’s objections, does not account for economic and spatial transformations.

A draft report “Census Criteria for Defining Urban Areas” was discussed by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Housing and Urban Affairs, headed by TDP MP Magunta Sreenivasulu Reddy, on Wednesday (September 16, 2026). The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, while deposing before the panel, said the old “rural-urban” binary was outdated and inadequate because of the diversity and complexity of economic activity.