How to solve: Ubuntu update error

Problem:

Sometimes it happens that running the updates in Ubuntu results in following error:

Could not initialize the package information.
An unresolvable problem occurred while initializing the package information.
Please report this bug against the ‘update-manager’ package and include the following error message:
‘E:Encountered a section with no Package: header, E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_natty_main_binary-amd64_Packages, E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.’

While running sudo apt-get update results in the following error:

Reading package lists… Error!
E: Encountered a section with no Package: header
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_natty_main_binary-amd64_Packages
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

Moreover, Synaptic Manger fails to start as well.

Solution:

The trick which worked with me is running following commands in the terminal (open terminal using Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
sudo apt-get update

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