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.
Zakariya Malik (30), son of PJ Yusuf, a resident of Kolake near Sajipamooda village is the victim. The attack took place when he was riding his bike towards Bantwal to visit one of his relatives house.
Comments
Mohan Chandiwale
First prove yourself otherwise dont be cheap to yourself.
SDPI must be banned from india! this type of attack will be going on, jai shivasena.
mohan, If you are correct then what Cheddis have done and doing is awesome and social security...........................?
if you are correct then why Hindus and Christians joined SDPI?
SDPI Zindabad....no matter you try to kill or attempt our work will go on ........you may kill one VIMULA it will haunt you as DRAKULA
this is what security given by our police department to our election candidates, serious action must be taken against accused,
zakariya your own gundas attacked u, all for vote bank,
Sdpi attack — feeling shocked
Hopefully it is not a revenge attack or this could get out of hand
As I earlier said the previous day attack by sdpi people is more important to media than many other similar attacks as it was captured in cam
SDPI/PFI are no less than SIMI, they have brought Karnataka to its knees by attack on Hindus
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