Amit Shah’s DK, Udupi tour in Feb; meeting religious leaders top on agenda

Davanagere, Apr 8: BJP MLA from Honnali constituency, MP Renukacharya, said that the government should not ignore those who attended Tablighi Jamaat event in Delhi and are escaping detection, and it is not wrong if the person is shot.

"Anyone who attended Tablighi meet, is not coming out for medical checkups and is escaping detection. The government should not ignore them. Even if he is shot, it is not wrong. Otherwise, the virus will spread throughout the entire country. In China it started with one person," Renukacharya said on Tuesday.

"We are suffering because someone is not coming for check-up. I request them to come voluntarily to the doctors and District Magistrates. Not all minorities are terrorists and not all of them are anti-nationals," he added.

A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking direction for the government to impose a complete ban on all activities of the Tablighi Jamaat with immediate effect.

Over 1,000 coronavirus cases in India are linked to Tablighi Jamaat gathering. Hundreds of people who are related to Tablighi Jamaat have been quarantined.

Bengaluru, Feb 24: Census authorities in Karnataka have requested deputy commissioners in the state’s districts to hold outreach and awareness campaigns about the National Population Register (NPR), as they fear misgivings about the exercise could hurt the forthcoming enumeration of population.

The house-listing phase of the Census and updating of NPR will be rolled out simultaneously by mid-April in the BJP-ruled state.

About 1,50,000 enumerators will handle the massive exercise.

Officials believe widespread awareness will help address concerns about the NPR data-gathering process and make people cooperate with enumerators when they visit houses for both NPR and census work.

“Sensing the kind of questions that enumerators may face when they do house visits, in all video conferences with deputy commissioners of districts, we have requested to establish contact with local representatives,” SB Vijay Kumar, director of Census Operations in Karnataka told news agency. “We have asked them to organise outreach programmes to ensure that people’s doubts are resolved before the information gathering work begins,” he added.

Census operations are handled by the Union home ministry. Several district officials are said to have raised concerns about the possibility of people refusing to share information when the work on the census and NPR begins in two months. This would affect the quality of the census work, making the exercise incomplete.

news channel earlier reported that people in parts of Karnataka had declined to share personal information with officials visiting households in connection with government programmes, suspecting them of gathering data for the yet-to-be unveiled National Register of Citizens, following enactment of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) recently.

Kumar said district authorities will train and sensitise enumerators to tread carefully while gathering information. Enumerators will be told not to demand information but seek it gently.

“We will tell enumerators to proactively engage with people. For instance, if an old man in a village does not know his exact date or place of birth, the enumerator may engage in a conversation with the person that may elicit some anecdotes and roughly establish the year and the place of birth,” the census director said.

As of now, the NPR questionnaire has 21queries, but officials say it has not yet been finalised.

With most of the census and NPR data gathering and storage happening digitally this time, the challenge before census officials is to convince people that the data would remain safe.

“Individual data is sealed and all that we can see is collective data. The information is consolidated and tailor-made. We are telling district officials to create awareness about data safety as well,” Kumar said.

Belagavi, Mar 16: Despite issuing an order banning large gathering, including lavish weddings, Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa attended the grand marriage celebrations of the daughter of BJP MLC Mahantesh Kavatagimath in Belagavi on Sunday.

The Chief Minister had advised people to postpone weddings till the COVID-19 scare passed off, or to restrict the number of guests to around 100. But the wedding on the lawns of Shagun gardens in the Udyambag industrial area in Belagavi had many more times the number of visitors.

A police officer on duty at the venue estimated the crowd to be over 3,000.

The large gathering was in clear defiance of the government order and the Chief Minister’s appeal. But Mr. Yediyurappa’s presence seems to have vindicated this act.

Hundreds of cars were parked on both sides of the Khanapur road, outside the venue which was decorated with flowers, buntings, rolls of paper and colourful cloth. Two huge banners about preventing the spread of COVID-19 have been put up at the venue. There are wash basins at two ends and several hand sanitiser counters across the ground.

Apart from Union Minister of State for Railways Suresh Angadi, and ministers Srimanth Patil and MLA Mahesh Kumthalli, there were several leaders from the BJP, the Congress and the JD(S) who attended the marriage. There were some officers from the city corporation and district administration among the guests.

The Chief Minister arrived around 11 a.m. and stayed for nearly an hour at the venue. He left after wishing the couple and greeting some leaders.

On his arrival, at the Sambra airport, Mr. Yediyurappa said the State was well-equipped to handle the spread of the infection. “Over one lakh have been tested. Among the 100 suspected cases, the virus was detected only in six persons. One person has died. But otherwise the situation is under control. Officers are working round the clock,’’ he said.