Overview

• Residents in Malda and Murshidabad, largely from minority communities, are crowding municipalities, gram panchayats and local courts to obtain or correct birth records.
• Local administrations report daily queues and have deployed extra staff and special cells to handle applications, according to English Bazar Municipality’s Subhamay Basu.
• Verification has tightened, with notary affidavits reported as insufficient without countersignatures from a municipality chairperson, a panchayat pradhan and a judicial magistrate.
• A parallel market has emerged as middlemen charge about Rs 1,900 and ferry groups to courts, while cyber cafés profit from demand for digital and printed copies.
• Political leaders are trying to calm nerves, with a TMC MP citing a Supreme Court order and vowing to resist SIR in the state as many still fear disenfranchisement or deportation.