Confidentiality Provision (Section 15) UPSC relevant
Section 15 of the Census Act, 1948 makes all individual census records strictly confidential: no person has a right to inspect any book, register, record or schedule made by a census officer, and no entry in them is admissible as evidence in any civil proceeding, or in criminal proceedings other than prosecution under the Act itself.
PIB's Census 2027 backgrounder adds that personal information 'cannot be made public under the RTI Act, used as evidence in any court of law, or shared with any institution.' Only aggregated data at State, district, sub-district and village/town levels are published. This legal wall — reinforced in 2027 by end-to-end encryption and Critical Information Infrastructure-designated data centres — is the standard official answer to privacy concerns about the new caste question and digital collection.