Lucknow: The Joint Registrar General (Civil Registration), ministry of home affairs, Sheetal Verma said on Wednesday that registration of every birth and death was mandatory under the Registration of Birth and Death Act, 1969. Apart from the Civil Registration System (CRS) portal, any other medium or handwritten certificate was not valid, she said.
Addressing the basic training programme of provincial civil service officers, Verma said the civil registration portal for the registration of birth and death was being made simple and convenient by the central government. An online system was being developed to provide timely certificates to the applicants of various public welfare schemes and to verify the issued certificates. An app developed by the National Health Mission would ensure that birth and death certificates were available free and easily to the beneficiaries, she said.
For quick and error-free verification of birth and death certificates, API (Application Programming Interface) was being used by sharing the QR code and civil registration portal with other departments. Continuous monitoring and review were being done through the inter-departmental coordination committee to fulfil this objective and to exchange the data at a fast pace, she said.
Birth and death registration certificate was a multi-purpose statutory proof for the common citizen. It not only provided protection to the individual at the social level, but was an important document for the benefits of government schemes, school admission, scholarship, inheritance of property, claims for insurance and social security benefits and benefits of government schemes. It was often necessary for administrative purposes, public health programmes, maternal protection and child and family welfare programme, she said.
Uttar Pradesh was the most populous state of the country. Out of the 2.9 lakh registration units in the country, 63,000 (22%) were located in Uttar Pradesh. According to data, around 50% births and deaths were registered after the prescribed period of 21 days. It was a matter of concern as the registration rate of women was almost half as compared to men. To achieve 100% registration target, a campaign should be launched in rural areas in which special focus should be on maternal death and issuing death certificates of women, she said.
Verma said according to Rule No. 9 of Section 13 of Birth/ Death Registration Act 1969, if birth and death was not registered within one year of its occurrence, it should be reported in writing to the deputy district magistrate (SDM) of the area concerned. Registration could be done by depositing the order and ₹10 late fee with the SDM, she said.