Published : Aug 17, 2026 19:28 IST – 5 MINS READ
Doctors and nursing staff of Shri Krishna Neuro Spine and Multispecialty Hospital pose with newborn babies on the occasion of World Population Day, in Bikaner on July 11.
| Photo Credit: Sanjeev Gupta/ANI
More than five decades after the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, came into force, the BJP-led NDA government recently passed an amendment to this law aiming to tighten rules to record the delayed registration of births and deaths.
The record of births and deaths constitutes an important institutional interface between the state and the citizens, determining demographic planning and access to welfare schemes. The persistence of erroneous or delayed entries undermines both state capacity and citizens’ access, which the recently passed Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Act, 2026, seeks to overcome.
Before 1969, it was through scattered administrative records that the state learned of a person’s existence, because birth itself was not captured in a uniform civil record. After the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, came into force, a uniform national legal framework was put in place to make the registration of every birth a standard civil registration obligation.
In 2023, an amendment to this law wired the birth certificate to almost every identity document, from Aadhaar to passports and driving licences, and to events like marriage registration and government appointments, in addition to facilitating the preparation of a population register and electoral rolls.
This had implications beyond civil registration as the birth and death database could now help the government update electoral rolls when a person became eligible to vote and when a registered voter died, in addition to identifying beneficiaries and maintaining more accurate databases of welfare schemes.
Since the certificate has come to acquire greater weight, through the recent amendment the government has made late entry into the birth register subject to stronger verification.
A form of graduated scrutiny has now been put in place wherein timely registration of birth and death goes through ordinary administrative verification, registrations delayed beyond 21 days and up to one year face enhanced administrative scrutiny, while registrations late by over two years now have to undergo judicial scrutiny instead of an executive order for registration.
The reforms serve to enhance the state’s capacity, but they also raise questions about accessibility for citizens who face several institutional barriers.
While the government argues that more scrutiny is essential to check fraudulent registrations to create a more reliable database, it risks raising hurdles for those people who were not born in hospitals, live in remote areas, have limited awareness of registration requirements, belong to economically or socially marginalised communities, or who have migrated from one place to another.
This is important, because the very population most likely to have delayed registration may also be the population least capable of finding its way out through judicial labyrinth. The foundational record may become harder to fabricate, but it might also become equally harder for genuinely unregistered people to obtain it.
Table 1 gives a glimpse of the number of births registered in percentages for all States over the 10-year period between 2014 and 2024. It shows a very uneven pattern of birth registration performance across States.
While some States, like Mizoram and Nagaland, which recorded 100 per cent registration of births in 2014. continued to retain the same in 2024, some States, like Maharashtra, Kerala, and Sikkim, have moved in the downward direction from 100 per cent, a decade later.
In contrast, States such as Bihar and Jharkhand have stepped up to 100 per cent over a period of 10 years. While States such as Uttar Pradesh and Goa have registered an increase, others such as Himachal Pradesh and Odisha have recorded a decline.