(TibetanReview.net, Sep19’23) – Come Oct 1 and the only document residents in India will need to avail most of vital government services will be your birth certificate, according to Indian media reports.
The Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Act, 2023 is set to take effect on Oct 1, allowing the use of a birth certificate as a single document for various purposes such as admission to educational institutions, obtaining a driving license, voter list preparation, Aadhaar number registration, marriage registration, government job appointments, and other purposes determined by the central government, reported the timesofindia.com Sep 14.
The announcement was made by India’s Ministry of Home Affairs in a notification issued on Oct 13. The notification stated, “In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (2) of section 1 of the Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Act, 2023 (20 of 2023), the Central Government hereby appoints the 1st day of October 2023, as the date on which the provisions of the said Act shall come into force.”
Under this Act, the Registrar General of India is empowered to maintain a national database of registered births and deaths. Chief Registrars (appointed by states) and Registrars (appointed by states for local areas) are responsible for sharing birth and death data with the national database. Each state is also required to maintain a similar database at the state level.
The new legislation stipulates that the national database may be shared with other authorities responsible for maintaining different databases, such as population registers, electoral rolls, ration card records, and other national databases as notified. Any use of the national database must be approved by the central government.
Similarly, state databases may be shared with authorities responsible for maintaining other state-level databases, subject to approval by the respective state governments, the report added.
Whenever you go to a government office to take admission in a school-college or to make documents like Aadhar Card, PAN Card and Passport, … many types of other documents are asked from you …. These include your date of birth proof, address proof, income certificate etc. Due to this many times you have to face a lot of problems and it takes a lot of time to prepare the documents, noted informalnewz.com Sep p16.
Now, to solve this problem, the Central Government is soon going to implement a new law, which gives you the freedom to use only the birth certificate as proof for almost all the important works, the report added.
This law also provides for facilitating the registration process of adopted, orphan, abandoned, surrendered, surrogate child and child of single parent or unmarried mother. It makes it mandatory for all medical institutions to provide a certificate of cause of death to the Registrar. This will facilitate quick registration of deaths and issuance of certificates in the event of a disaster or epidemic, the report said.