India has 34 births, 10 deaths every minute: report

New Delhi, Mar 5 (PTI) At least 34 births and 10 deaths
are registered in India every minute, a census body Thursday
revealed.

According to the Registrar General of India, a mind
boggling 49,481 births and 14,475 deaths are registered in the
country every day but the figure accounts for less than 70 per
cent of the actual data.

It also revealed that even though registration of births
is an universal right of the child under a UN Convention, to
which India is a signatory, the current level of birth
registration is 68 per cent.

The death registration in the country stood at 63 per
cent of the actual occurrence.

While states like Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have
made considerable improvement in the last four years, Uttar
Pradesh and Bihar lagged behind, Registrar General of India D
K Sikri told a national conference of Chief Registrars of
Births and Deaths.

Presenting the statistics at the two day meet, Sikri said
the National Population Policy 2000 has mandated 100 per cent
level of registration of deaths and births by 2010.

He said the total number of Registration Units in the
country was 2.55 lakh in which 18.6 million births and 5.28
million deaths were registered during 2006.

Other major issues which be deliberated Friday, the
concluding day of the two-day conference, is entry of names of
parents of babies born through Assisted Reproductive
Technology (ART) in the births records and legal validity of
electronically generated birth and death certificates under
the RBD Act, 1969.

During the conference today, Kerala was awarded the first
prize among the highly populated states and Tamil Nadu bagged
second prize for their commendable performance in keeping a
proper record of births and deaths.

In the medium-populated states, Delhi was adjudged first
and Himachal Pradesh second whereas Puducherry bagged the
first prize and Chandigarh second prize among small states and
Union Territories. PTI SAP
PMR
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