Can’t alter birth, death details in records: BMC

The BMC was responding to a previous direction of a bench of Justices A S Oka and R I Chagla, hearing the petition of a 31-year-old woman from Nalasopara.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has recently informed the Bombay High Court that it has no power to alter a birth or death related entry from its records.

The court was hearing a single mother’s petition seeking a birth certificate for her child without the father’s name.
The corporation’s birth registration department filed an affidavit in court on Wednesday, stating that it did not have the authority to issue a birth certificate in the present case, without the name of the child’s biological father.

Appearing for BMC, advocate Suresh Pakale told the court that once an entry is made in the corporation’s records, its officials only have the power to amend it, if it is found to be “incorrect,” or “if the same has been recorded fraudulently”.

“Since that is not the case here and the petitioner herself gave us the information of her marital status and the name of the child’s biological father, we cannot delete it from our records and the birth certificate,” said Pakale.

The BMC was responding to a previous direction of a bench of Justices A S Oka and R I Chagla, hearing the petition of a 31-year-old woman from Nalasopara. In her plea, the woman said she was unmarried and that she gave birth to a girl through test tube method (IVF) in August 2016. She claimed that since the identity of the donor in her case was kept secret by the medical authorities, there was no way for her to have given the BMC the name of her child’s biological father.

BMC counsel Pakale, produced the girl’s birth certificate and the original records, including the hospital form giving information about the child. As per records, at the time of the child’s birth, the petitioner had given her full name and claimed that she was married to a businessman. She had given that man’s name as the child’s father.