Errors in names spell huge trouble to people

Nellore: Negligence on the part of officials as well as ignorance among people in registration of names in officials records is causing immense trouble in the later stage. For instance, a private employee from Nellore approached Passport Seva Kendra in Vizag a couple of years ago where they simply rejected the application saying there were errors in the birth certificate and the SSC marks memorandum.

The reason was simple as the name of the father spelled differently. He consequently lost the chance to go abroad for employment since the passport was delayed. There are number of such cases where people face lot of problems in getting names corrected in official records. In another case, an employee died recently and his son has to be appointed in the department on compassionate grounds.

When he approached the municipal officials, he found that his in the records was completely wrong with officials there saying hospital authorities had entered it wrongly. In their turn, the hospital staff argued that it was who should be blamed as they provided wrong information to them. Now, he is trying to move heaven and earth to get his name corrected.

In fact, the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, is rigid, making it tough to correct names or details without following standard procedures. Even though it is a mistake or negligence on the part of hospital or local body employees, the ultimate victims would be the people.

According to the Act, a birth or death has to be registered within 21 days. Any information regarding birth given to the Registrar after the expiry of 21-day period but within 30 days of its occurrence, shall be registered on payment late fee as may be prescribed.

Any birth delayed after 30 days but within one year shall be registered only with the written permission of the prescribed authority along with an affidavit made before a notary public.

Any birth which has not been registered within one year of its occurrence, shall be registered only on an order made by a magistrate of the First Class or a Presidency Magistrate after verifying the correctness of the birth by following an elaborate procedure. But this is being avoided with strict enforcement of registering the births on a timely basis but the errors have been haunting the people.

In a village environment, a person says his name as simply Ramayya and the hospital staff record it as Ramaiah, which gives scope for huge correction procedure. Sometimes they enter differently according to their knowledge and educational background leaving the people to their fate.

“At a time when Aadhaar is being considered as permanent source of data of a family, why the government is not taking it as basis for registering the names at the hospitals at this digital revolution era? In such a case the data would be perfect and there would be no scope for further modifications. At least the staff should insist for some documentary proof while registering the names of the parents,” said DR V Ramakrishna Reddy, a retired senior medical officer.

People wait for some relaxation by the government for making corrections to the entries once in every two to three years. Still, there are brokers in civic bodies and gram panchayat offices for these activities. There was only amendment to the Act in 2013 regarding entry of marriages to protect women from unnecessary harassment in matrimonial cases.

“A single error, missing of a letter, or any kind of deviation is being viewed very seriously giving scope for huge corruption and delay in correction process at various levels. There should be a punishment for the staff who do such things at the offices,” said A Prabhakar Rao, a social activist. He added that applications for hundreds of corrections come to the civic bodies/gram panchayats due to the negligence of the staff of the hospitals.

By P V Prasad