UPPSC 2019 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 33 of 150

Correct — B, 21 days. Under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969 — the statute that runs India's Civil Registration System — every birth and every death must be reported to the local registrar within 21 days of its occurrence, and registration within that window is free of charge. (Precisely: section 8(1) of the Act says information shall be given 'within such time as may be prescribed'; the 21-day period and the no-fee rule are set by the rules made under the Act, not by the Act's own text.) The Act then provides a graded set of delayed-registration steps: an event reported after the 21-day window attracts a late fee, an event reported after 30 days and up to a year needs the written permission of the prescribed authority, and an event reported more than a year late can be registered only on the order of a magistrate. The 21-day figure is the one the question asks for, because it is the only period during which registration is a plain right rather than a concession.

• (a)15 days — Fifteen days is not a period recognised by the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969 for reporting a birth or a death. It is a plausible-sounding round number with no statutory basis here.
• (c)26 days — An arbitrary figure with no place in the Act — it exists in the options only to sit between the two numbers that do matter, 21 and 30.
• (d)30 days — The most tempting wrong answer, because 30 days does appear in the scheme of the Act — but as the outer edge of late registration, not as the normal reporting period. Between 21 and 30 days an event can still be registered on payment of a late fee; only within 21 days is registration ordinarily due as of right and free.

The Civil Registration System is India's continuous, compulsory and permanent recording of vital events — every birth and every death, as and when it happens. It rests on the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, and it is administered in a chain: the Registrar General of India coordinates nationally, each State has a Chief Registrar of Births and Deaths, and the actual entries are made by local registrars — a panchayat secretary, a municipal official, or the designated officer of a hospital. This is quite different from the Census, which is a decennial snapshot of the whole population, and from the Sample Registration System, which estimates birth and death rates from a large sample rather than recording every event.

The exam wants one number, so the safest way to hold it is as a pair: 21 days to register, 1 year beyond which only a magistrate can order registration. Recognise that the paper is testing the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, not any hospital or municipal rule — the correct answer is a statutory period that applies uniformly across India. Note too that 'vital statistics including registration of births and deaths' sits in the Concurrent List of the Seventh Schedule, which is why the Union lays down the Act while the States run the machinery and frame the rules.

• A birth or death must be reported for registration within 21 days of its occurrence; registration within this period is free.
• The governing law is the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, which made registration compulsory throughout India.
• Delayed registration is graded: a late fee after 21 days, written permission of the prescribed authority after 30 days and up to a year, and a magistrate's order beyond one year.
• The system runs through the Registrar General of India at the Centre, a Chief Registrar of Births and Deaths in each State, and local registrars on the ground.
• 'Vital statistics including registration of births and deaths' is a Concurrent List subject under the Seventh Schedule.
• Present-day note for a 2026 reader: the Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Act, 2023, brought into force in October 2023, moved the system to a digital national database and made the birth certificate a single document of proof for services such as school admission and Aadhaar — but it did not change the 21-day reporting window.

• Choosing 30 days because it is the more familiar administrative deadline — 30 days is part of the late-registration ladder, not the reporting period.
• Treating the Census and the Civil Registration System as the same thing: the Census counts everyone once a decade, the CRS records each event as it happens.
• Assuming a hospital's own reporting practice or a State rule overrides the statutory period — the 21-day window comes from a central Act and applies uniformly.

UPPSC likes single-number statutory recall of this kind — days, years, percentages — while UPSC tends to approach the same territory conceptually, asking how India's population data is generated and which source yields which indicator.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following authorities coordinates the Civil Registration System at the national level in India?

  • (a)Registrar General of India
  • (b)National Statistical Office
  • (c)NITI Aayog
  • (d)Ministry of Health and Family Welfare

  Answer(a) Registrar General of India — the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner coordinates civil registration nationally, while each State works through its own Chief Registrar of Births and Deaths.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following is best described as a continuous, compulsory and permanent recording of vital events in India?

  • (a)Census of India
  • (b)Sample Registration System
  • (c)Civil Registration System
  • (d)National Family Health Survey

  Answer(c) Civil Registration System — it records every birth and death as it occurs; the Census is a decennial count, the Sample Registration System estimates rates from a large sample, and the NFHS is a periodic sample survey.