Taking its digitisation plan ahead, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has now decided to scan and upload records of all birth and death certificates available in its archive starting from the year 1880 to 2017. While the scanning of the majority of these records is done, the indexing of scanned data will take another year to complete, said BMC officials.
"The indexing of scanned data of records of Birth and Death Reports from the year 1880 is required to be carried out. As a pilot project‟ for the indexing of 50,000 records/reports is proposed for which Rs 5.50 crore has been proposed in the budget 2022-23," said Suresh Kakani, BMC Additional Municipal Commissioner (Health).
He added," We are targeting to complete the pilot project of scanning and indexing the scanned records by April 2022. The archival records are massive in numbers hence we decided to have a cut off from 1880. When ready, citizens can avail the archive records of birth and death from BMC offices across wards."
The project of digitising birth and death records was first initiated in 2016. And data was being scanned in two phases. In the first phase, certificates from 1998 to 2015 was to be uploaded, and in the second phase certificates from 1990 to 1998 were to be uploaded. The BMC shifted to an online facility to download birth and death certificates on January 1, 2016, using the Civil Registration System (CRS) software prepared by the Registrar General of India.
The data was uploaded in phases to the CRS server. However, after giving access to citizens to the CRS for a brief period it was shu. In 2017 CRS server was pulled down after the central government notified the BMC of malpractices and misuse of the digital facility. According to civic officials, the central government notified the civic body that they received complaints that people were downloading the death and birth certificates of others randomly.
However this time citizens will not be given access to download the records and certificates on their own, they can only procure the birth and death records/certificates via BMC wards offices only. However, the process of procuring the birth and death certificates will be quicker assured BMC officials said.
