Parliament amends birth registration law, registrations after two years require court approval

The Story in Brief

Parliament on Tuesday passed the Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Bill, 2026, revising how delayed registrations are processed under the 1969 Act. The amendment redraws section 13(3): delays of between one and two years will continue to be handled by an executive magistrate, while registrations reported more than two years after the event will now require an order from a judicial magistrate of the first class rather than an executive magistrate. Executive magistrates are part of the state administrative cadre under section 14 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023; judicial magistrates sit under section 9, are appointed by the high court and preside over criminal courts.

India’s 2024 Civil Registration System recorded 25.47 million births and 8.94 million deaths, with completeness at 99.1% for births and 99.4% for deaths. About 70% of births were registered within the 21-day window, while roughly 5.87 million births across reporting states arrived more than a year late. The Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha by Union home minister Amit Shah on July 24 and cleared by the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday; its Statement of Objects and Reasons says it will make delayed registration more stringent, and the Financial Memorandum records no cost to the exchequer.

The Indian Opinion

Some commentary may present the amendment as either an onerous clampdown or as an unqualified improvement to identity integrity. Both framings oversimplify. The law does increase judicial oversight for registrations older than two years, which could add legal steps and slow some cases, yet it may also strengthen verification for late entries into a database now foundational to many identity documents. Available CRS data show many registrations arrive after a year, but they do not separate the one-to-two-year group from those over two years; without that split, the scale of the amendment’s practical impact is uncertain. An ordinary reader may reasonably weigh the stated aim of greater stringency against the possible administrative effects and the lack of an assessed fiscal cost.

Original article: Register a birth two years late and you may have to go to courts: Amendments in key law passed by Parliament (Hindustan Times)

This story was summarised and commented on by AI from the source linked above.