In the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution, the subject of census is placed in which list?

The correct answer is B, Union List. Census appears as entry 69 of the Union List in the Seventh Schedule, so only Parliament can legislate on it, and the operation is carried out for the whole country under one law, the Census Act of 1948. The work is done by the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, which functions under the Ministry of Home Affairs, with state governments supplying the enumerators.

Option A, State List, is wrong; if census were a state subject every state would count its people by its own definitions and the figures could not be compared. Option C, Concurrent List, is the common wrong choice because candidates associate population and family welfare, which really are concurrent subjects, with the census itself. Option D is wrong because residuary powers under Article 248 cover only subjects mentioned in none of the three lists, and census is expressly mentioned. Note also that the first Indian census was taken in 1872 under Lord Mayo and the first synchronous one in 1881 under Lord Ripon.