Before the elections in Bengal, a big fraud regarding birth certificates has come to light. Initial investigation has found 1.8 lakh birth certificates to be fake. Mamta government has ordered intensive investigation and confiscation of registers.
There are indications of a major fraud before the 2026 assembly elections in West Bengal. Before the elections, the process of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) was conducted in the state. Now a shocking case has come to light regarding birth and death certificates. Suddenly a large number of birth certificates have been issued in the year 2025. At that time there was a TMC government led by Mamata Banerjee. In view of this unusual surge, the Subhendu Adhikari government of Bengal has ordered intensive investigation in the entire state.
Registers will be confiscated from Panchayat and Municipalities
After this matter came to light, the administration is in full action. On Thursday, officials were ordered to seize all registers related to birth and death certificates. An official, on condition of anonymity, said that all the registers maintained by municipalities and panchayats are being collected. After collecting the data, these registers will be returned to the local bodies in two to three days.
Bengal Chief Secretary Manoj Kumar Aggarwal has termed this entire investigation process as a ‘purification campaign’. This data will be examined in depth over the next three to four months to identify genuine and fake certificates.
Data of 1.8 lakh fake certificates revealed in test check
According to Chief Secretary Manoj Kumar Aggarwal, a preliminary test check has confirmed the presence of a large number of fake certificates. Of the 46,998 ‘delayed birth certificates’ examined, at least 11,390 were found to be fake.
At the same time, when about 11 lakh 24 thousand digitized certificates were examined, about 1 lakh 80 thousand of them were found to be fake. In two places alone, Kakdwip in South 24 Parganas and Matigara in Darjeeling, between 4,000 to 6,000 such dubious certificates have been issued.
How did the number of certificates increase suddenly?
Government figures themselves testify that there has been an unexpected jump in the rate of issuance of birth certificates in the year 2025.
A total of 1,21,453 birth certificates were issued in the state in the year 2023. In the year 2024, this figure increased to 3,81,591. But in 2025, there was a huge jump and 10,50,441 birth certificates were issued in the entire state.
Now only government officials got the right
Amidst the fear of this big fraud, the government has taken strict action. The Chief Secretary has clarified that from now on only authorized government officials will be able to issue birth and death certificates. The government believes that by doing this accountability will be easily fixed in future.
Highest number of certificates issued in these three districts
Another official said that the highest number of certificates being issued was seen in three Muslim-dominated districts – Murshidabad, Malda and North Dinajpur. It is noteworthy that the cases of deletion of voters’ names during SIR have also been disproportionately high in Muslim dominated districts and assembly constituencies.
