Section 3 in The Births, Deaths And Marriages Registration Act, 1886
3. The Indian Statute-Book contains at present no general law for the registration of births and deaths. There are indeed enactments which provide for the registration of births and deaths within certain specified areas, principally municipalities and cantonments, but, in the first place these enactments are strictly local in their nature, leaving the greater portion of the country unprovided for, and. in the next place, their provisions, being directed primarily to statistical purposes, are not of such a nature as to make the registers of births and deaths kept under them of value for purposes of evidence.
4. As to the numerous registers of baptisms and burials which are kept .by ministers of religion in all parts of the country, it is doubtful how far they can be relied on for giving accurately the requisite particulars as to births and deaths, and most of them would, moreover, be inadmissible in evidence.5. This being the state of the law,and considering the importance of the subject generally, and the memorials above referred to. and having regard to the fact that references are frequently made to the Secretary of State for India and to the Government of India for proof of age or of deaths in connection with questions involving large individual interests, such as rights to properly, the Government of India is of opinion that it is expedient to enact a permissive law under which full facilities for registering births and deaths should be given to persons valuing unimpeachable evidence of these events.6. As to the second object of the Bill it is obvious that no system of registration of births and deaths can be complete or of practical value unless it provides for the establishment, at certain centres, of general offices where the information registered at the vaious local offices shall be collected and so arranged as to be readily available for public reference.7. In this connection, the attention of the Government of India has been directed to the unsatisfactory nature of the system of registration of marriages under the Christian Marriage Act, 1872.Documentary evidence of all marriages under the former Act is, by the provisions of the Act or the orders thereunder, sent to the Secretary of the Local Government who is also empowered to grant certified copies which are receivable in evidence. It would seem. therefore, at first sight, that nothing further was required. But as a matter of fact, not only are no arrangements made for maintaining an index to the marriages the records of which are retained in the local Secretariat, but (he greater portion of the marriage records which are received in the local Secretariat have, under Section 81 of the Act and the orders in force, to be sent on in original to the Government of India in the Home Department for transmission to the Secretary of State, so that the greater number of the marriage records which reach the local Secretariat do not remain there for purposes of reference and such as do remain are, owing to the absence of an index, practically valueless.As to Act III of 1872. this Act makes no provision for the marriages solemnized under it being reported to any central authority. The marriage certificate books for which it provides are retained by the Registrar who is not even required to index them. Their value as records of marriage to which they refer is accordingly much diminished.
