Taking its drive against illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya immigrants ahead, the Maharashtra government has decided to make amendments to the Birth and Death Registration Act, Revenue Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule said on Wednesday, adding there will be stringent regulations and harsher punishment for forgery of documents.
Speaking in the legislative Assembly, the minister said, “Individuals faking their identity in applications to access birth and death certificates will be treated as a very serious crime which will be dealt with firmly. The plan entails treating birth and death registrations as a quasi-judicial matter, which will be subject to rigorous scrutiny.”
The minister said that the new provisions clearly define the registration process for the Birth and Death Registration Act of 1969 and Maharashtra Birth and Death Registration Rules of 2000.
“The certificates will be issued once a thorough verification is done on records of places of birth or death. Village officials to district collectors have been instructed to adhere to these stricter norms with immediate effect. In cases of discrepancies, the officials have to issue a non-availability certificate furnished with details. All applications will be subjected to police verification. The final report will be arrived at based on police reports,” said Bawankule.
Claiming that the objective is to weed out illegal settlements, the minister said that stricter norms are to bring greater transparency into the system and ensure there is “no misuse of the system by illegal infiltrators”.
According to Bawankule, “Often it came to our notice that illegal nationals besotted to bribing the local officials and exploiting loopholes of the system to obtain the birth and death certificates.”
As per amendments in new guidelines, it will be mandatory to apply for birth and death certificates within a year, he emphasised.
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“The verification will be at three-level system. The authorised magistrate will have to ascertain the accuracy of the information and charge a late fee, thereby fulfilling several legal requirements. All applications will undergo police verification, and final approval will be based on the police department’s report, and then the final certificate will be issued,” minister said.
For death certificates, postmortem report, copy of the FIR or any evidence given by competent authority should be submitted, while for birth certificate, the certificate issued by nursing home is required, the minister said.
BJP leader Kirit Somaiyya had earlier raised an alarm over the rising numbers of Bangladeshi and Rohingyas in several places of Maharashtra.
Somaiyya pointed out, “These infiltrators get themselves enrolled as citizens using fake birth certificates. They have also made voter ID cards.”
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