A staffer of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) is reliably learnt to have been recommended for suspension for his role in issuing fake birth certificates from Falaknuma circle.
Departmental inquiry held him responsible for the issue of about 20-30 birth certificates without documentary proof over the past six months.
As per highly placed sources, the staffer, who is a senior assistant, would sign the verification forms certifying the hospital births, without actually verifying with the hospital records. After the data entry process is completed, he would simply tear off the verification form, in order to erase evidence, sources shared.
Despite complaints by the operator about the same, the Assistant Municipal Commissioner, who was the designated registrar for the Falaknuma Circle, did not take any action, they said.
When hospital births are claimed, which are more than a year old, the records would not be available online for the same. They need to be verified manually with the hospitals concerned, which was not done in these instances.
One of the certificates issued was for a birth in 1998 in St. Ann’s Hospital, but when the enquiry team checked the hospital records for the year, there was no such entry. The team checked four hospitals in the circle, mentioned in the certificates, but did not find the corresponding records.
In case of home births, a Non-Availability Certificate needs to be issued by the Registrar after verification, which would be attached with the application and sent to the Revenue Divisional Officer concerned. After the second level verification, the RDO would issue proceedings for the issue of birth certificate.
In order to avoid the cumbersome procedure, people claimed hospital births as a short cut, leading to the scam.
Controversy continues to plague the issue of birth and death certificates, reportedly with specific emphasis in Charminar zone. It is learnt that the whole zone is under scanner now, and a ground verification will be soon taken up in relation to the certificates issued in recent past.
Two years ago, another instance of issue of fake birth and death certificates emerged, which exposed collusion between the Mee Seva and the GHMC staff, prompting the then Commissioner of GHMC D. S. Lokesh Kumar to withdraw about 26,000 certificates issued by the corporation.
