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.
Comments
The chaddis will not hesitate to do any mischief... They will kill themselves and put the blame on others....as it happened in Bhatkal, where it was found that a Hindu auto driver placed a meat bag in the Nagabana to create trouble..... If they are saints, why they are carrying torch flames in their hands.....that speaks a lot of their intentions.......What do you say Naren and Riyadh Bopanna ??????/
dear hindhu brothers,
police will investigate and find the killer soon,
same will happen in mangalore also one hindhu bro murdered and sobha nalin are very active in protest against other religion
after our police caught the killer even he was also hindhu
i dont know where is nalin and sobha after that same as hidden file in mangalore .....
drama maker..
Now to shut this goons mouth police will start arresting innocent Muslim youths as usual.. Police should investigate it toughly and find out the real culprit.. May be someone inside his family did this as the same was happened before..
Police have to probe the case of this murder.
Noticed a new gimmick by Hindutva group that for any yatras of their these days they carry \Fire Torches\". What message they want to give?????"
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