The Madras high court has directed the registering authorities to register the birth or death of a person whenever information is furnished by the head of the household or any other person prescribed under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, without probing the nature of death.
A single judge had allowed the petition by N. Vedantam and directed the that the death of Vedantam’s wife while in transit between New Delhi and Patna in a train on May 3, 2010, be registered and the death certificate be issued to him.
On Tuuesday, a division bench of Justices Elipe Dharma Rao and M. Venugopal dismissed the appeal filed by the executive officer, town panchayat, Perungalathur, and the director, Directorate of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, challenging the order of the single judge.
The appellants had contended that the death had not occurred within their jurisdiction and hence they cannot be directed to issue the death certificate. It was the duty of the railway guard in the train to give information of the death of woman to the registrar of births and deaths, Kanpur.
The bench said it was not in dispute that though the death of Vedantam’s wife occurred in train during the transit, after completing the formalities, the body of the deceased was brought to her residence and was cremated at Perungalathur, which comes within the jurisdiction of Perungalathur town panchayat.
The Act or the Rules do not envisage the officer refusiing to register the information. In the present case, without even registering the information given by Vedantam, the appellants have refused to issue the death certificate, the bench said.
A reading of section 8 and 9 along with section 7 makes it clear that it is the mandatory duty of the officer to register the particulars in the forms prescribed by the state government.
In these sections, it was not indicated that the information has to be from within the territorial limits of the registrar when he gives information on births and deaths to the registrar.
Further, there was no provision of law enabling the registering authority to go into the nature of death.
When the government was propagating and trying to educate the citizens to register marriages, births and deaths, it was not proper on their part to take a contra stand and drive persons from pillar to post for registration these, the bench said.