Government today expressed satisfaction over progress of the work on National Population Register and census enumeration exercise, noting that data collection has been completed in several states and Union Territories.

It appealed to people not to lose the slips given by the census officials after collection of data as these will be required during NPR exercise.

Union minister for state for home Ajay Maken, who took stock of the progress of NPR, ongoing house-listing and census exercise, said data collection has been completed in Assam, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Meghalaya, Goa, Sikkim, Lakshadweep, Orissa, Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Dadar and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu and parts of Himachal Pradesh.

He said the process was about to be completed in Andhra Pradesh and Tripura and in case of West Bengal, while it had been completed in most areas, the dates had been extended upto June 30, 2010 for a few other areas in the state.

Maken, who visited R K Puram area of the capital for an on-the-spot inspection and in field interaction with census officials, enumerators and residents, appealed to the people to retain the slips given to them after having submitted the filled up census forms.

This he said was essential since it would be needed during the time of NPR exercise, which would involve taking bio-metric identification by means of fingerprint impression, iris impression and photograph of individual.

"It was reported that people were not amply informed about the importance of this slip and the procedural delays that its loss may cause. The minister instructed census officials and enumerators to inform the people accordingly," a statement here said.

Concerned over reports that many landlords were not permitting their tenants to get listed in the census exercise, Maken said that the landlords should facilitate the exercise, least the data generated is flawed.

He underlined that the information given in the census by people was to be kept strictly confidential and therefore any landlord need not worry on this account. Inaccurate information and data were detrimental to the success of the entire census exercise, he stressed.