A Bill to amend the Registration of Birth and Death Act, which is among the 21 new Bills listed to be introduced in the ongoing session of Parliament, is likely to make Aadhaar compulsory for registration of births and deaths for whoever has one.
On June 28, the Centre allowed the Registrar General of India (RGI) to perform Aadhaar authentication during registration of births and deaths in the country. Presently, Aadhaar is not mandatory for such registration. The proposed amendment to the 1969 Act will give it a legal teeth.
The Bill also requires States to compulsorily share data on registered births and deaths with the RGI, which functions under the Union Home Ministry. The RGI will maintain its own register of births and deaths, presently States are required to only send annual statistical reports to the RGI.
A senior government official said almost all States have consented to the proposed amendments. As per the requirements of the amendment, States will have to sign a memorandum of understanding with the RGI to share the Application Programming Interface (API) from where the data can be pulled out. While all States are required to use the Civil Registration System (CRS) operated by the RGI to issue birth and death certificates, there are some States which have their own applications.
The database will be used to update the population register or the National Population Register (NPR), the Bill proposes. NPR is the first step towards the creation of National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC) or NRC.
NPR database
If the amendments are implemented, the Centre could use the data to update the NPR that was first prepared in 2010 and revised through door-to-door enumeration in 2015. NPR already has a database of 119 crore residents. The real-time updation of the data on births and deaths will eliminate the requirement of such enumeration to a large extent.
The database will also be used to update the electoral register, Aadhaar, ration card, passport and driving licence databases.
The official said Census besides being a headcount exercise also contains more granular details on socio-cultural indicators and is conducted every 10 years, an aberration being the 2021 Census which has been suspended indefinitely post-COVID-19, but updating the population register will give a clear picture of population figures in real-time.
