This admission season, parents are thronging Gaya Municipal Corporation for birth certificates of their children.

The rush for birth certificates, in a way, is causing delay in getting death certificates from the civic body as well.

Though residential, income, caste certificates have been included in the Right to Public Services (RTPS) Act, birth and the death certificates are yet to be included in it.

Under the RTPS’s tatkal scheme, residential, income, caste certificates have to be issued within two days.

Whereas according to provisions, the birth and the death certificates, which don’t fall under the RTPS, have to be issued within 21 days from the date of application.

The number of applications seeking birth certificates has increased in December because most schools issue admission forms in January.

In a hurry to get birth certificates, several parents are also falling into the trap of brokers, who charge something between Rs 100 and Rs 200 for a certificate.

Rajiv Kumar, who had applied for his daughter Surabhi’s birth certificate, said he had to pay Rs 200 to get one.

Usually a civic body does not charge a penny for a birth or death certificate.

Assistant statistical officer Birendra Kumar Tiwari admitted that there’s a sudden rush of applications seeking birth certificates.

“In November, around 1,200 applications were filed, compared to 1,800 in December,” he said.

At the same time he insisted that guardians should not pay to brokers to get birth certificates.

“Refrain from such act,” he said.

Referring to a March 2011 letter issued to all district magistrates by the chief registrar (birth and death) he said: “Guardians can get their wards admitted to any school, government or private, without producing date of birth (DoB) certificate. But they will have to give an undertaking that they will produce the DoB of their wards within six months from the date of admission. So, guardians should not be in a hurry to get birth certificates.”

As a cascading effect, issuing of death certificates is being delayed.

Manish Kumar (45) who had applied for the death certificate of his father Satish Kumar on January 2, received it on January 9.

“The death certificate was necessary to avail pension for my mother and also for the clearance of bank deposits in case a person is a government employee,” he said.

Manish, however, did not spend money to get the certificate.

Assistant statistical officer Tiwari said there is only one computer programmer to make birth and death certificates. Second, there is a target to distribute around 7.62 lakh birth certificates to students of all government primary and middle schools in rural areas on January 30 — the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

The computer programmer is working overtime to make the birth certificates and achieve the January- end target.

“There is need for two computer programmers. One each for birth and death certificates,” said a source.