Digitised certificates to be made available online

Digitised online birth and death certificates enabling citizens to download them in a jiffy is soon going to be a reality, as early as from Republic Day onwards. The GHMC, which maintains the births and deaths register, is moving heaven and earth to keep up with the deadline in the last few days.

If everything goes well, citizens for now can approach the nearest eseva and APOnline centres and obtain the certificates already available in the database. For the last few months, a hectic exercise was on where a private agency has been helping health officials in pouring through the available records to verify the records.

Once verified, the available data is being digitised for putting it online so that the certificate can be downloaded at the designated centres on payment of a prescribed fee (may be Rs. 20) within a few minutes with the digital signatures of the assistant medical officer of health concerned, senior officials disclosed.

The municipal corporation has been verifying birth and death records of the last five years to begin with, and process is on to digitise them. About 12 lakh certificates have been verified till date of the 70-odd lakh data available in the records currently being maintained.

While the records are available from 1957 onwards, the GHMC is planning to make available certificates from 1995 onwards.

There is a reason behind the year because it was realised that demand for certificates was mostly pertaining to the last 10 to 15 years.

Such birth and death certificates can be obtained straightaway unless there are spelling corrections and change in the names involved. But, non-availability certificates and no data certificates cannot be issued online as these have to be verified physically, senior officials said.

In a related issue, GHMC Commissioner M.T. Krishna Babu has written to the government seeking relaxation of the rules so that citizens can obtain the birth certificates with the inclusion of names up to the age of 35 years instead of the current 15 years as several citizens were approaching for such inclusion of names in the birth certificates.

These certificates were especially important for people settled in foreign countries for immigration and green card purposes, he explained. The municipal corporation issues non-availability certificates if a citizen has not taken the birth certificate with inclusion of name before 15 years of age.