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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.

Udupi, June 2: The number of positive cases may continue to be more in Udupi district since the results of more than 3,000 samples are pending with Labs.

The district total cases to 260. The figure had seemed far-fetched on May 15, when the number of cases stood at just three. The latest spike has been attributed to the return of migrants from other States as well as from abroad. These samples are from people who returned to the district in the last two weeks.

This delay is because the laboratories testing samples from Udupi are burdened with a high case-load after more than 8,500 people returned to the district, particularly from the neighbouring state of Maharashtra.

"Samples have piled up after the influx of people returning from other states and from abroad," says Dr Prashant Bhat, nodal officer for COVID-19 in Udupi. This delay has caused returnees in institutional quarantine to stay on for as long as 18 days.

The designated laboratory for coronavirus testing in Udupi is Wenlock District Hospital in Mangaluru. The district administration also sends samples to laboratories at the Kasturba Hospital in Manipal, Yenepoya Medical College, Mangaluru, KS Hegde Medical Academy, Mangaluru, and Viral Diagnostic Laboratory in Shivamogga. Apart from Udupi, the laboratory in Manipal is also testing samples from Uttara Kannada district. The laboratory in Shivamogga is also testing samples from Shivamogga and Bijapur districts. The laboratories in Mangaluru, similarly, have samples from Dakshina Kannada district.

Dr Avinash Shetty, Medical Superintendent of Kasturba Hospital in Manipal, one of the private laboratories being used by the Udupi district administration, said that they are testing samples in batches. "We received around 600 samples today and we will be testing them now. The backlog of samples should be cleared in the next few days," Dr Avinash said.

All 73 cases reported in Udupi on Monday were patients with travel history of returning from Maharashtra or patients with travel history of returning from abroad.

In cases of some patients who tested coronavirus positive in the past week, people were released from institutional quarantine after a stipulated period only to be tracked down again and admitted in hospitals after their results returned positive.

While two such cases emerged in Belapu and Belman in the district, the administration is now following up with others who were released from institutional quarantine to ensure they remain in home quarantine till their test results are confirmed.

The spike in cases among returning migrants in Udupi also comes at a time the Karnataka government reduced restrictions on interstate travel.

Bengaluru, Mar 14: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on Saturday suspended its proposed Akil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS) meeting scheduled to be held in the outskirts of the city, in the wake of the outbreak of Coronavirus in the state.

'In view of the seriousness of the pandemic COVID-19 and in the light of instructions and advisories thereof issues by the Union and the state governments, the Akil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha meeting scheduled in Bengaluru has been suspended', Sarakaryavah Suresh Joshi tweeted.

All Swayamsevaks should cooperate with the administrations to create awareness among the public and to face this successfully, he said.

It may be recalled that Karnataka State Government had ordered shut down of pubs, malls, theatres, and ban mass gatherings over the Coronavirus scare, on Friday.