Digital Birth, Death certificates from today

Bhubaneswar is the second city after Cuttack where the digitized signature on birth and death certificates has been launched. The service was made functional in Cuttack last week. Last year, the BMC made it mandatory for hospitals and nursing homes here to communicate information relating to births and deaths to the city health office online.

Doing away with the conventional practice of putting hand-written signature on birth and death certificates, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has introduced digitized signature of appropriate authorities. After successful trial run, the ‘digitized’ system will go full-fledged from Monday.

“Birth and death certificates with digitized signature of city health officer would be officially distributed from Monday,” BMC commissioner Sanjib Kumar Mishra told.

“SMS, barcode and e-mail features have also been included in the e-municipality application where applicants will get SMS and e-mail alerts during registration of birth and death certificates online in the future,” Mishra said.

The civic body expects that the launch of digitized signature would enable faster issuance of birth and death certificates under the time-bound public delivery system. “Now, one need not wait for the city health officer to come and put his signature. His digitized signature can be put immediately after creation of the certificate,” Mishra said.

“And if at all we manage to apply online, we will have to visit the city health office to submit documents. It does not make sense in online service,” said Bijay Mishra, a citizen said.

BMC officials said people can submit documents and make payment for the certificates online soon. “At present, people can apply online for the certificates on www.ulbodisha.gov.in. We will spread awareness about the website and integrate it with the BMC website,” said an officer.

BMC issues about 90 birth and death certificates in a day. (Source – The Times of India)