Statutory Town UPSC relevant
A statutory town is any place with a municipality, municipal corporation, cantonment board, notified town area committee or similar urban local body constituted under law by the State/UT government — irrespective of its population size, density or economic profile.
Legal status alone makes it urban in census tabulations, in contrast to census towns, which qualify on demographic criteria. Statutory towns are also the mandatory core of every urban agglomeration. PIB's Census 2027 backgrounder counts 5,128 statutory towns in the administrative frame frozen on January 1, 2026, up from 4,041 in 2011 — reflecting fifteen years of municipalisation. How much of India counts as 'urban' in 2027 will depend jointly on this statutory list and on how many villages pass the census-town tests.