Standard system needed to check identity fraud

Newspapers carry ‘public notices’ about change of name or date of birth. It would appear from these ‘notices’ that changing one’s name or date of birth is a simple procedure, where all that is required is an affidavit sworn before a notary public and insertions in the newspapers. One can become a few years older or probably even younger by just making an affidavit and issuing a notice! It would be interesting to know whether this would be accepted for a government servant who is on the verge of retirement.

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The first legal record of a person’s name and date of birth is the record with the Registrar of Births and Deaths after the birth of that person is registered officially. The law that covers these matters is the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, and every state has notified rules under this Act. This law does not provide for changing the name or date of birth, except for correction of errors. Certainly, changing the date, month and year of birth would not qualify to be called ‘correction’ by any stretch of imagination.

This law requires that every birth should be registered at the place where it occurred, within a period of 21 days. Since sometimes, a child’s name is not finalised within this time, the law allows the name to be added to the register at any time in the next 15 years. Many state governments have provided facilities for registration in the hospitals itself.

If the registration is delayed for any reason, it can still be registered with documents from the hospital where the birth happened, or other proofs

of birth at the offices of the local Registrar of Births and Deaths at the place where the birth took place.

For a delayed registration, a nominal late fine would need to be paid and an affidavit produced if the delay is of more than a month. However, for any birth to be registered after a year, an order from a First Class Magistrate will be needed.

As fifty years have passed since the Act was implemented in most parts of the country, one would expect that registrations delayed by more than a year are rare. It is interesting to see how many such ‘delayed registrations’ happened during the last couple of years for which figures are available in the report, ‘Vital statistics from civil registration system’ released by the Registrar General of India.

The delayed registrations form less than one per cent of the total registrations in Kerala while it is as high as 88% in Arunachal Pradesh and 95% in Nagaland. Unfortunately, data from two of the biggest states — Bihar and Uttar Pradesh — are not available from the reports.

Rajasthan registered about 17 lakh births in a year. Of these, 2.3 lakh in 2017 and 2.8 lakh in 2018 were those registered late by more than a year. These accounted for 13.6% in 2017 and 15.9% in 2018. Delhi registers over 3.6 lakh births a year. In 2017, more than 40,000 (13.6%) and in 2018, more than 27,000 (7.5%) were those registered late by more than a year.

If we assume 300 working days in a year, we find that about 900 orders must have been issued every day for delayed registration in Rajasthan. In Delhi, with about 30 sub-divisional magistrates (SDMs) who would issue these orders, each SDM would be issuing about three orders every day. It is difficult to imagine how these number of orders can be issued after ‘due verification of the correctness of birth’ as provided under the law.

It is possible that some of the delayed registrations are being made to avoid practical difficulties. These may include problems in procuring birth certificates from the place of birth or getting admission to preferred schools meeting all the admission requirements. It may be that the birth registration records have a name different from the one that the family wishes to use. However, it has to be recognised that the route of affidavits and newspaper advertisements exposes those who follow it to avoid legal complications in future. It also defeats the very purpose of birth registration as a basis for creating a legal identity for a child.

Goa has a law regarding change of name (Goa Change of Name and Surname Act, 1990). This law provides for a certificate of change of name linking it with the name entered in birth register. Probably, a similar legislation at the national level can be helpful in resolving the issue of change of name. It would provide a standard system for change of name, by linking it to the birth register, ensuring that the date of birth is not changed.

The newspaper announcements regarding a change in name and date of birth do not appear to have been done with any processes at the office of the Registrar of Births and Deaths, as the advertisements do not refer to them. It is next to impossible to provide any sort of proof to change the date of birth, unless the processes of verification are being wilfully compromised.

Identify fraud is a real threat in India as it is in other parts of the world. The general public needs to be informed that mere newspaper announcements cannot be the basis of changing names and the date of birth and the agencies concerned should be alerted to dangers involved in large-scale delayed registration processes in some states.