The High Court of Karnataka has said that the recent amendment made to the Karnataka Registration of Births and Deaths Rules, 1970, which empowered the revenue authorities to pass orders to permit registration of births and deaths if not registered within a year of occurence, would amount to “permitting the tail to wag the dog” if the amendments are not obliterated.
Quashing the July 18, 2022, notification issued by the State government amending the rules, the court said that amendment made amounts to tinkering with the very mandate of Section 13 of the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, through the power of the State to make rules under the Act.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order while allowing a petition filed by Sudarshan V. Biradar, a Kalaburagi-based advocate, president of Chincholi Bar Association.
The petitioner had questioned the legality of the amendment, which empowered an ‘Assistant Commissioner (Sub-Divisional Magistrate)’ under the Revenue Department to pass orders on delayed registration of births and deaths, which are not registered within one year. Earlier, this power was vested with ‘a Magistrate of First Class or a Presidency Magistrate.’
On analysing the provisions of the Act, the court found that Section 13 (3) of the Act itself mandates that any birth or death which has not been registered within one year of its occurrence shall be registered only on an order made by “a Magistrate of the First Class or a Presidency Magistrate after verifying the correctness of the birth or death.”
‘Judicial power’
Therefore, it is the ‘judicial power’ conferred upon the Magistrate of First Class under the Act and such registration on delay can be only on an order made by such Magistrate, the court said while clarifying that the power conferred under the Act is ‘neither quasi judicial nor administrative.’
“If Section 13 of the Act confers certain judicial power upon a Magistrate of First Class, it is trite that the rules cannot take it away by deviating from what is mandated under the Act,” the Court said, while holding the amendment made by the Government is illegal as it is contrary to the mandate of the Act.
