Catchy radio jingles will soon form part of the census office’s arsenal to make people understand the importance of the National Population Register (NPR) and why every individual must enroll in it.
The jingles will be reeled out soon in the state, Census officials here said. ‘’We’ve submitted the Malayalam jingles to our Delhi office. The idea is to create awareness about NPR. Newspaper ads and brochures are also planned as part of the exercise,’’ A N Rajeev, deputy director, Census Operations, Kerala, said. NPR is a register of all ‘usual residents’ in the country and the Citizenship Act makes it mandatory to get enrolled in it, but too often people confuse it with the Aadhaar UID project. Biometric data - iris scans, photograph and prints of the ten digits - are collected for NPR. Even if a person has registered for Aadhaar, he/she has to get enrolled in NPR. NPR enrollment was stepped up in Kerala this month since curtains fall on the Phase I on March 31, 2013. To date, about 1.25 crore individuals have registered, and a little over the same number will be enrolled in the coming months. ‘’We are now using 1000 biometric machines for enrollment in the state. Their numbers too will be increased,’’ Rajeev said.