Centre asks Haryana to hold inquiry, seeks action-taken report

PASSING THE BUCK The Registrar General of India writes to Haryana CS, says chief registrar of state is responsible for effective functioning of birth, death registration system

CHANDIGARH: India’s Registrar General and Census Commissioner has requested the Haryana government to “conduct a proper inquiry” into the red flags the state health department has raised over unauthorised people generating fake birth and death certificates by breaking into the Civil Registration System (CRS) portal.

In a series of letters shot-off to the Registrar General of India (RGI) between June and October this year, Haryana has been listing the details of how “thousands of fake birth and death certificates were generated fraudulently” by unauthorised persons after breaching the security of the CRS portal that RGI maintains.

And it is after HT report (Haryana sounds alarm over fake birth, death certificates, December 2) that Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, Vivek Joshi, on December 9 sent a letter to Haryana chief secretary Sanjeev Kaushal, seeking action-taken report in this matter from the state health department.

“It is requested that necessary directions may be given to the authority concerned to conduct a proper inquiry on the issue of fake birth certificates and take appropriate action required under the law. Office of RGI will provide assistance in the said inquiry, if required,” said Joshi, the RGI, who is a senior IAS officer, in his twopage letter (HT has the copy).

“An action-taken report (ATR) in the matter by the chief registrar, department of health will be appreciated.”

The registration of births and deaths in country is done under the provisions of the Registration of Births and Deaths (RBD) Act, 1969 and corresponding state rules.

According to Joshi’s letter, the RGI, at the central level, coordinates and unifies the activities of registration throughout the country.

Contrary to Haryana’s contention that no action is being taken by the RGI office despite showing information about illegal use of CRS portal, the RGI has said the CRS is state governed and implementation of the statute is vested with the state governments, which has appointed the chief registrar as the chief executive authority in the respective states for implementing the Act.

As the head of registration system, the letter says, the chief registrar is responsible for organisation and operational aspects of the Act for effective functioning of the registration system in the state.

Other states also flagged fake birth certificate issue

According to the RGI’s letter, there were “reports from few state governments” regarding issuance of fake birth and death certificates. These reports included “misuse of user/login ID and passwords in the existing portal/software” developed for online registration of birth and deaths by unauthorised persons.

The RGI has said that in view of such reports, chief registrars of states/UTs were requested on July 28 and September 29 to issue instructions to all registration functionaries not to share their login details and periodically change the password. The letter further says that chief registrars were instructed to take legal action in case of misuse of user/login ID and password of any user or fake registration.

“In spite of the aforesaid instructions, it has come to the notice of the office of RGI that some unauthorised persons by misusing login ID/password or otherwise have issued fake birth certificates in few cases on the CRS portal for online registration of births and deaths in the state of Haryana,” says RGI’s letter to Haryana chief secretary.

The reported compromised IDs and fake records, states the letter, were blocked and deleted by office of RGI. In addition, director, directorate of census operations, Haryana has recently taken up the matter with authorities concerned in state.The letter further seeks direction to Haryana’s chief registrar to instruct all registration authorities in the state to “exercise due diligence while accessing CRS portal/software”.

The blame game

While RGI’s latest missive clearly deflects Haryana’s contentions, on the other hand, the state health department in its October 13 letter to the RGI said: “Despite repeated requests and showing information about illegal use of the CRS portal, no action has been taken at your end and the misuse of the portal is yet to be controlled. The fake registration cases are still being informed to this office.”

In another letter to the RGI, which comes under the Union ministry of home affairs, Haryana health department said they were unable to keep check on creation of fake registrar and sub registrar in the portal as they don’t have control/access over database.

The state health authorities stated that despite earlier communications “regarding misuse of CRS portal by hacking it” at least 243 births were registered illegally in Panipat’s ESI hospital and primary health centre using bogus user identification in October.

“It seems that some outsiders have good control over the CRS website...” Haryana had told the RGI.