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.
Kundapur, Mar 2: A 43-year-old man was arrested by the local police in Udupi district after he allegedly raised pro-Pakistan at Mini Vidhana Soudha in Kundapur today morning.
The man has been identified as Raghavendra Ganiga (43), a resident of Kody in Kundapur. He was working as a Hindi teacher in a private school in the town a few years ago.
According to sources, Ganiga arrived at the Mini Vidhana Soudha at around 10 am and scaled the steps to the building raising 'Pakistan Zindabad' slogans repeatedly.
He continued to raise slogans on the corridor and after entering a hall. A few people recorded this drama on their mobile phones and informed the police.
Later, Kundapur tahisldar filed a written complaint against with the local police, who took Ganiga into custody.
According to police, Ganiga was under depression after his wife deserted him and left him with their only child.
Mangaluru, May 15: Dakshina Kannada saw a record spike in the number of fresh COVID-19 cases today, which triggered panic among the people of the district, which is currently under orange zone.
According to the mid-day bulletin of the Department of Health and Family Welfare, as many as 16 people from Dakshina Kannada tested positive for the covid-19.
Among them 15 are the Gulf returnees who were brought by an Air India Express special flight from Dubai to Mangaluru International Airport on May 12.
As many as 179 repatriates had landed at Mangaluru Airport. Among them 125 are quarantined in Dakshina Kannada, 49 in Udupi and five in Uttara Kannada districts.
Meanwhile, a 68-year-old woman from Surathkal area in Mangaluru, who is suffering from Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) was also tested covid-19 positive.
This is the highest number of cases reported in a single day since first case registered in the district on March 22 when Dubai-bound youth from Bhatkal was tested positive.
With this the total number of covid-19 cases in the district mounted to 50 including five deaths. Many of them have returned home after recovery.
3 members of a family test positive
According to Deputy Commissioner Sindhu B Rupesh, three members of a same family are among 15 gulf returnees who are tested positive. They are a 45-year-old man, his 33-year-old wife and their 6-year-old child.
Six among those who tested positive today are above 60 years of age, said the deputy commissioner.
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We are already facing lot of problems here without food and money.
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