New Delhi, (IANS) A two-day conference to review the current status of registration of births and deaths across the country begins here Tuesday to discuss ways and means to make registration mandatory.
The National Population Policy has mandated to achieve 100 percent registration of births and deaths by the year 2010 while current levels show 64 percent registration for births and 58 percent for deaths.
Kerala stood first in the country with 100 percent birth and death registrations, followed by Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Karnataka stood fourth with 87 percent registration.
While states like Kerala, Mizoram and Goa are model states, others like Bihar lag far behind with only 18 percent of the vital statistics reported annually.
Experts attribute the incompleteness of the birth and death statistics of India to factors like poor remuneration to data collectors, discriminatory attitudes towards the female child and non-institutional deliveries.
In rural areas, it is the duty of auxiliary nurses and midwives to register all births in a village. In addition, the government has recently given village panchayats the power to register births and deaths in their localities.
States like Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, West Bengal and Bihar have already implemented this provision in their respective state policies.
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi is slated to make a presentation on the software, linking immunization with birth registration records (LIBRE), that has helped track the unregistered children.