India is urbanising quickly, but the number of people officially counted as city residents does not always show the number of people who are physically present and using city services. One reason is the growth of long-duration circular labour migration. In this pattern, workers spend much of the year away from their rural homes for work and return regularly, while their families often remain in the village. Recent research describes this as permanent circular labour migration. This paper examines what this pattern means for urban service planning in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. It uses secondary data from the Census of India, the Periodic Labour Force Survey, government reports, international sources and published research. The study compares population change, migration evidence, housing, water, sanitation, waste, transport, health and education. The evidence shows that circular migration creates a challenge for planning systems that rely mainly on usual residence or other fixed population measures. However, the available data do not allow the study to calculate the exact number of circular migrants in each city or to prove that migration alone caused particular service problems. The comparison instead shows that local land markets, housing supply, governance and the type of jobs available can change how population and labour mobility are reflected in urban service pressure. The paper therefore argues for planning systems that pay greater attention to the population actually present in cities, while also recognising the economic value of migration for rural households through work and domestic remittances.