Around 70,000 birth and death certificates seized from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s headquarters and its 16 borough offices are to be scanned and digitised under orders issued by Kolkata Police Commissioner Ajay Nanda, according to a report by Bartaman Patrika – Kolkata. The certificates are expected to undergo verification after being brought under scrutiny by the state government.
The order directs that the documents be digitised immediately with the assistance of Webel, the state-linked technology agency. The exercise covers certificates seized from the KMC headquarters as well as from all 16 borough offices, placing a large volume of municipal records within a police-coordinated digital process.
According to the report, certificates issued during the previous Trinamool Congress government are being considered for verification after the BJP government came to power in the state. Certificates issued during the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, period are reportedly among those included on the new government’s list of documents requiring scrutiny.
The move places birth and death registration records at the intersection of municipal administration, policing and state-level oversight. These certificates are issued through the civic system and are used as official records of vital events. The order to scan the seized documents means that the administration will create a digital record of the material before or alongside the verification process.
Lalbazar sources told Bartaman Patrika – Kolkata that the officer in charge of the Kolkata Police computer cell and Joint Commissioner of Police (AP) Vaibhav Tewari have been instructed to coordinate with Webel for the work. The direction places the police computer cell in a central operational role while the documents remain connected to the municipal offices from which they were seized.
The seizure operation began on July 23, following a direction from the director of the state health department, the report said. The health department’s involvement reflects the administrative link between vital registration and public health records, while the subsequent police order concerns the handling, scanning and digitisation of the documents.
The report does not specify how many certificates will ultimately be rejected, altered or confirmed through the verification exercise. It also does not provide details of the criteria being used to identify certificates for scrutiny, the duration of the digitisation process, or how applicants and families connected to the records will be notified.
For Kolkata’s civic administration, the immediate task is therefore record preservation and coordination across multiple institutions. The next steps identified in the order are the scanning and digitisation of the seized certificates through coordination between the Kolkata Police computer cell and Webel. Further details of the verification process were not available in the supplied report.
