Overview
- Police carried out coordinated searches on Thursday at municipal, panchayat, crematorium and civic offices across multiple districts and seized physical registers, server logs and related documents for scanning and review.
- The state has removed the power of elected panchayat and municipal chiefs to issue birth and death certificates and authorised district magistrates, medical officers and designated government registrars to take over issuance.
- Official test checks cited by the administration found large numbers of suspect entries, including about 11,390 of 46,998 delayed certificates in one sample and roughly 1.8 lakh questionable records among 11.24 lakh digitised files.
- Authorities say many of the irregularities surfaced during the Election Commission’s SIR roll revision and that fake certificates were allegedly used to add names to voter lists; past police cases also linked forged certificates to passport fraud and alleged trafficking rings.
- The government will carry out door-to-door re‑verification, cancel certificates judged illegal, link the cleaned database to the central CRS portal and pursue criminal and administrative action as investigations and FIRs continue.