New Delhi: The draft amendment to the Registration of Birth and Death Act has a provision to update the database of births and deaths with other databases, the Ministry of Home Affairs informed the Lok Sabha today.
Union Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai made the remarks on a day when the Parliament passed a bill to link electoral rolls with the Aadhaar ecosystem.
The move has been strongly opposed by the Opposition. A decision to prepare a National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC) has not been taken yet, the Government said on a query if the database would be used for the National Register of Citizens.
"Following consultations with the concerned Union Ministries and Departments and all the State Governments and Union Territories, a draft amendment to the Registration of Birth & Death (RBD) Act, 1969 was placed in public domain from October 18, 2021 to December 2, 2021 for comments, which inter alia includes a provision to use the database of births and deaths to update various databases," Mr Rai said.
Mr Rai's was replying to a question on whether the government has any proposal to link birth and death certificates with Aadhaar to maintain real-time databases of citizens and update NATGRID database.
Replying to another question, the minister said as per Section 17 of the RBD Act, any person may cause a search to be made by the Registrar for any entry in a register of births and deaths and may obtain an extract from such register relating to any birth or death.