Report No. 270
Chapter VII
Feasibility of Information Technology-Enabled Registration
7.1 The object of the proposed amendment of the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969 would be to create a central civil registration portal that consists of records of birth, marriage and death and to provide convenient access to the documents. In the present era of technology, manual registration may be very tedious and time consuming. Some State Governments already provide the facilities of compulsory registration of marriages online. Accordingly, registration of marriages should be made possible online as far as possible, in other states as well.
7.2 Online facilities are being provided for several government services. For example, the Ministry of External Affairs launched the Passport Seva Project in May, 2010 to improve the issuance of the passport and related services. Citizens may submit their passport applications and seek appointment on payment of passport fee online at their convenience. A multi-lingual call centre operates in 17 languages which enables citizens to obtain passport services related information and receive updates about their passport applications, round the clock, seven days a week. Under this program, the sovereign functions like verification, granting and issuing of passport; and the control of data / information, have been retained by Ministry of External Affairs.
7.3 Similarly online birth registration services are also being provided in India. A similar procedure may be followed for registration of marriages as well.
7.4 Some States already provide web portals for online registration of marriages, but it would be desirable to have a centralised national portal for maintenance of records such registration. The Commission is of the opinion that availability of forms and documents in vernacular languages must be ensured to make the said portal easily accessible to all citizens.
7.5 Also, if registration of marriage is linked to the unique identification number (UID), it would be possible to achieve universal tracing of records.
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