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No census of Christians on, government clarifies

The government today categorically denied that any Christian census was being carried out in New Delhi or any other part of the country.

''Reports in a section of the media that the Delhi police is carrying out a census of the Christian community in the capital are totally false and absurd,'' Information and Broadcasting Minister Pramod Mahajan told reporters at his weekly briefing after the Cabinet meeting.

There was an established system for carrying out a census in this country and it is never done by the police, Mahajan said.

The minister also categorically denied a report circulated by a foreign news agency that an American couple had taken shelter at a seminary at Allahabad after being forced out of a nearby Uttar Pradesh village where they had been living since 1988.

Mahajan said the couple had denied talking to that news agency, or having been forced out of the village where they were running a school. He said it had also been denied that the person concerned was an American citizen, though he had married an American.

He regretted that the wrong news about the threat to the couple had been circulated worldwide. A correspondent of the news agency, who was present at the news conference, apologised, and clarified that the news item had been promptly withdrawn and the stringer dismissed from service.

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