Post racket, admn tightens rules for birth certificates

BAREILLY The district administration has made norms more stringent for obtaining birth certificates, after the police busted a racket in which certificates were

BAREILLY The district administration has made norms more stringent for obtaining birth certificates, after the police busted a racket in which certificates were being issued online by some cyber cafes connected to nagar nigam’s e-suvidha kendras.

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“We have asked the Bareilly Municipal Corporation (BMC) not to entertain online applications for birth certificates more than one year old without proper verification of documents,” said an administration official.

He said those applying for birth certificates for newborns would also have to submit required documents duly attested by a gazetted officer now.

“All applications would have to be properly vetted by the city magistrate and health officials before issuing a birth certificate,” he said. BMC officials said more people were queuing up to procure birth certificates at their centres amidst apprehensions over the implementation of new citizenship law and the proposed National Population Register survey scheduled to commence from April 1.

The police had busted a racket following a complaint by the BMC that it had come across some fake birth certificates, which were issued by a cyber cafe in Bareilly.

“We have 123 e-suvidha kendras in Bareilly district and another nine Common Service Centres (CSC) affiliated to the chief medical officer. Birth certificates for newborns can be obtained from e-suvidha kendra after proper verifications within a month, beyond that and for an earlier period it can only be issued by CSCs,” said Khaliq Ahmed, in-charge at BMC.

And the demand for these certificates has doubled. “Usually, we issued 70-80 birth certificates a week. But since January 1, we have issued 269 certificates,” said Ahmed, adding that majority of those queuing up were in the age group of 50-60 years.

BMC officials claimed that the online system was introduced to check forgery in birth and death certificates as all the 224 hospitals in the district were now linked to maintain a database in their records.