Desk Report
Publish: 30 May 2022, 12:49 pm
High Court || Photo: Collected
The
High Court has directed the government to investigate the disappearance of a
large amount of birth and death registration information from the database
stored on the server.
An HC
bench of Justice Mojibur Rahman Mia and Justice Khizir Hayat passed the order
after hearing a writ petition filed in the public interest on Sunday.
The
HC also issued a rule questioning why the government’s inaction to prevent the
difficulties faced by the people in obtaining birth and death certificates and
non-investigation of the disappearance of a large number of information from the
relevant servers should not be declared illegal.
At
the same time, the HC asked why the creation of a central database should not
be directed as Rule-19 of the Birth and Death Registration Act-2019.
The
LGRD Secretary, the Registrar General of the Birth and Death Registration of
LGRD, the Director-General of the Planning-Monitoring, Evaluation and
Inspection Office, and the Joint Secretary of the Law Department of the ministry
have been asked to submit the probe report responding to the rule in four
weeks.
Lawyer
Md Tanvir Ahmed appeared for the writ petition in the court while Deputy
Attorney General Bipul Bagmar represented the state.
Md
Tanvir submitted legal notice in this regard on April 4 attaching a report
published in a national daily on March 12 entitled 'Citizens in Extreme
suffering with birth registration certificate' and on February 4, 'Birth
Certificate: Birth registration information of millions of people in Bangladesh
not listed on server'.
The
report stated that the birth registration law was enacted in 2004 and came into
force in 2006. A birth registration certificate is mandatory for various
important activities including passport issue, marriage registration, admission
to educational institutions, obtaining a driving license, and land registration.
In
the beginning, handwritten certificates were given. Then at the end of 2010, an
initiative was taken to digitalize it.
At
that time the government also provided a separate allocation for computer
training to the registrars concerned. But not all the information was digitized
at that time, especially in the city corporations and densely populated areas,
the report said.
According
to another report, the Registrar General's Office in charge of registration of
births and deaths in Bangladesh and officials of the Dhaka City Corporation say
that millions of people who had previously obtained birth registration
certificates now need to be re-registered online as their previous registrations
have disappeared.
The
birth registration of these individuals has not been updated online and it will
no longer be possible to transfer old data to the new server. Authorities
concerned are also struggling to cope with a large number of online birth
registrations of a large number of school students.
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