“As of now, it is mandatory to have a certificate of birth for registration of marriage and there is no alternative to the certificate,” says Dr S P Kulkarni, municipal medical officer (health), under whose charge comes the office of the Registrar of Births and Deaths, which is assigned the job of registering marriages taking place in the municipal corporation areas.

On the first two days, nobody has come forward for registration of marriage, Kulkarni said adding, that the registration would be done by clerks in the registrar’s offices in civic wards.

He agrees that there may be thousands of persons, who do not have a birth certificate or those who have come from other states and do not have birth certificates, are going to have a tough time getting married.

The remedy, according to Kulkarni, is that such persons will have to file an affidavit seeking a new certificate.

But even if one has a birth certificate, one may face major hurdle in getting married if one’s name does not match with the one in current use.

In Gujarat, and may be in some other states as well, there is a tradition of deciding name of the newborn child only after certain number of days of birth.

But since the certificate is issued within a specified time-frame, the parents or other relatives leave the name column blank or just write ‘babo’ (boy) or ‘baby’ (girl) in the certificate. In the subsequent euphoric celebrations, they forget to get the name entered in the certificate.

They realise this when they are required to produced a birth certificate much later, say, for issuance of a passport or now, for marriage.

Dr Kulkarni said that such persons will have to get the certificate corrected by filing an affidavit signed by a notary public and produce it to the AMC office which would issue a corrected certificate.

This is going to increase workload on the AMC staff who are already facing prospect of freeze on fresh recruitments.

Other problems that need clarifications for solution include, how to deal with cases of migrant labourers who do not have any birth certificate or people belonging to below poverty line who cannot afford payment of registration fee.