Registration of Births and Deaths Act (RBD), 1969

Context

Recently, the Centre has proposed amendments to the Registration of Births and Deaths Act (RBD), 1969.

Registration of Birth and Death

• Registration of Births and Deaths in India is mandatory with the enactment of the Births and Deaths Registration Act (RBD), Act of 1969 and is done according to the place of occurrence of the event.
• With a view to simplifying the provisions of the various sections of the existing RBD Act, 1969 and to make people more friendly, an amendment is proposed.

Proposed amendments

• Chief Registrar to maintain Combined Data: The Chief Registrar (appointed by States) would maintain a unified database at  State level and integrate it with "national level" data, which is maintained by the Registrar General of India (RGI) (under the Department of Home Affairs).
• Currently, registration of births and deaths is done by a local registrar appointed by the States.
• Special Sub-Registrars: Appointment “Special sub-Registrars, in the event of a disaster,  with any or all of his powers and duties for on the spot registration of deaths and issuance of extract thereof, as may be prescribed.”

Expected Use of Data

• To update the National population Register (Citizenship Act, 1955) and electoral register (Registration of Electors rules 1960), and Aadhaar (Aadhaar Act, 2016), ration card (National Food Security Act, 2013), passport (Passport Act) and and driver's license database(Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Act of 2019).
• NPR already has a database of 119 million citizens and under the Citizenship rule, 2003, is the first step towards the creation of the National Register of citizens (NRC).
• The NPR update  and the first phase of the census will be conducted simultaneously by the RGI.