Uttar Pradesh is the first state to have announced Suo Moto Birth Registration; this means that the parents will not have to apply for birth certificates as government facilities will issue the same at birth. Know more..

New Delhi: Newborns at government health facilities in Uttar Pradesh will now be issued birth registration certificates immediately after delivery without the need for parents to apply for the same. With this development, Uttar Pradesh has become the first state to implement suo motu birth registration for government health institutions. For this, the state government has integrated its MaNTrA (Maa Navjaat Tracking) app with the birth registration system using digital technology.

Parents Not Required To Apply For Birth Certificates

Partha Sarthi Sen Sharma, the Principal Secretary of Medical Health, said, “The Directorate of Census Operations, Lucknow, has partnered with the Uttar Pradesh National Health Mission (NHM-UP), UNICEF, and the Office of the Registrar General of India, Delhi, to facilitate the generation of automatic birth registration certificates at government facilities.” Initially, 1,000 facilities will provide this service in the state, and the number will gradually increase, according to officials.

Suo Moto Birth Registration: Procedure

Explaining the procedure, the principal secretary stated that the civil registration system application programming interface retrieves data for 17 fields from the Maa Navjaat Tracking app (MaNTrA), managed by NHM-UP. The data is then configured into a birth certificate, digitally signed by the hospital registrar. “Birth certificates can now be handed over to the parents of the newborn within hours of birth,” he added. “We will strive to roll out this facility in all government facilities in the coming months so that an automatic birth registration certificate is issued on the spot in each case,” he added.

“Birth certificates thus can be handed over to the parents of the newborn within hours of birth. The application programming interface (API) is now operational for all government health institutions which function as Registrars (up to the primary healthcare level) albeit with minor difficulties on the part of Registrars. Around 2,500 birth certificates have already been issued so far,” Sensharma told PTI.

Objective Of Suo Moto Birth Registration In Uttar Pradesh

“The idea was to seamlessly integrate the MaNTrA app with the birth registration system to facilitate automatic birth registration certificates at the facility itself, even without an application. It is a step towards increasing the ‘ease of living’of a common citizen by creatively using digital technology architecture. It is a constant endeavour of the state government to use the latest technology to make life easier. We are doing our efforts in that direction and we have many miles to go,” Sensharma said.

(Inputs from IANS and PTI)