Patna, March 27: The state government is mulling to simplify birth registration rules.

Statistics collected from government schools and anganwadi kendras of the state have revealed that only around 36 per cent of schoolgoing children in Bihar have birth registration certificates. Around 2 crore students are registered in government schools, while around 65 lakh have enrolled at anganwadi kendras.

“Birth registration certificate is a vital document needed in several work. Realising that majority of children in the state don’t possess this important document, the state government has decided to simplify rules to help clear off the backlog at the earliest and easily register the birth of around 30 lakh children in the state every year,” a senior state government official, preferring anonymity, said.

Elaborating on the likely changes to be introduced in the birth registration rules, the official said: “In rural areas, we intend to engage anganwadi workers as panchayat secretaries in this work. At present, those workers responsible for this work in rural areas are overburdened with other work and it is humanly impossible for them to register all the births taking place in their respective areas of work.” There appears logic in the proposed move as there are around 90,000 anganwadi kendras in Bihar and the anganwadi workers keep tabs on pregnant women in their areas. It would be much easier for them to undertake the birth registration work.

Proposed changes also talk about engaging block statistical officers and block development officers in the birth registration work.

“The proposal says anganwadi workers would have the right to register births within 21 days of birth of a child, the block statistical officer would have the authority to register births after 21 days of a child birth and within one year of birth. In case of a birth is not registered even after one year of birth of a child the block development officer is likely to be given the authority for doing the registration work,” said the official. He added this is being mooted as people, at present, have to go the office of the sub-divisional officer for registration of birth in case it has not been registered within one year of birth of a child and it makes the process cumbersome.

As far as birth registration in urban areas is concerned, the government is contemplating to link government and private hospitals in this process. “The proposal says these institutions would have to inform about childbirths to the municipality or the municipal corporation concerned. These would issue birth registration certificates based on information received from government or private hospitals,” said the official.