The Government of Bengal announces the transfer of the office of registration of births and deaths from local authorities to officials | Today’s news
The West Bengal government on Friday announced the replacement of gram panchayat pradhans and chairpersons of municipal bodies as registrars of birth and death registration, devolving the authority to DMs, nodal health department officials and heads of state hospitals.
The notification came a day after Chief Secretary Manoj Kumar Agarwal announced that elected representatives in rural and civic bodies would no longer be empowered to issue birth and death certificates.
Agarwal said on Thursday that from now on, only designated government officials will be authorized to issue birth and death certificates, removing the powers of all elected public representatives in the wake of widespread irregularities in the issuance of such documents, with many of the alleged irregularities coming to light during the Special Intensive Review (SIR) of electoral rolls.
“Our government is constantly working to make public administration more transparent, accountable and accessible to every citizen of West Bengal. To further improve public service delivery, we have introduced key structural reforms in birth and death registration across the state,” Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said in a post on X.
The notification, which invoked the West Bengal Births and Deaths Act, 1969, empowered DMs to now officially function as district registrars of births and deaths, bringing centralized coordination to the district level.
DMs have been empowered to appoint Block Medical Officers of Health (BMOH), rural and urban hospital superintendents and heads of medical colleges to act as registrars for all institutional births and deaths, he said.
“Dedicated government officials will now be appointed as registrars for each Gram Panchayat and Municipality to streamline record keeping and administrative workflows,” the CM said.
“These progressive measures are designed to ensure better accuracy, efficiency and seamless services to our people,” Adhikari added.
The state government has also decided to re-verify all birth and death certificates registered since 1997. Officials will conduct door-to-door verification and any certificate found fake will be cancelled, the chief secretary said on Thursday.
“The BJP supports decentralization of power in forms, political, economic or administrative. The government has taken a step in the right direction and it has our support,” Samik Bhattacharya, president of the BJP’s Bengal unit.
