The state health department has temporarily stopped issuing birth and death certificates in two categories: delayed registrations and digitised versions of manually written certificates.

Sources in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation said they had been unable to process new certificates for these categories on the government portal since Wednesday morning.

The halt follows a health department order issued on Tuesday asking district magistrates, municipal corporations and municipalities to carry out “proper verification” of all digitised birth certificates and certificates issued offline between May 14, 2025, and February 28, 2026.

The post-SIR electoral roll in Bengal was published on February 28, 2026. Over 60 lakh names were removed from the voter list and kept “under adjudication”.

Till late Wednesday, there was no clarity on why May 14, 2025, had been chosen as the starting point for scrutiny.

Health department sources did not deny a link between the verification drive and the suspension of the two services.

“We will introduce additional security features for delayed registration cases and digitised certificates,” a state official said.

KMC officials said they were caught off guard. “When we tried processing delayed registrations and digitisation requests on Wednesday, the functions had been disabled. Nothing had been communicated to us,” an official said.

A delayed registration refers to the registration of a birth or death at least a year after the event took place.

“Even till the 2000s, birth certificates used to be handwritten. When someone applies for digitisation, we first have to scan the records, verify them, upload the details and generate a digital certificate,” a KMC official said.

The health department’s order asked district magistrates to ensure that verification of birth certificates was carried out in an “expeditious and systematic manner”.

Officials were told to examine “every single certificate”. The order stated that while verifying digitised certificates, officials must check “the competency of the issuing authority and submission of relevant documents”.

Sources said the government wanted to review certificates issued over the past year.

The KMC and other municipal bodies had witnessed a surge in applications for birth certificates ahead of the SIR. Sources said many delayed registration applications came from people who had never obtained a birth certificate earlier.