Want a death cert online? Join the queue

Kochi: Obtaining a birth or death certificate online from any local body in Kerala is as simple as, say, getting a movie ticket on bookmyshow. Except that it's not the case in Kochi Corporation, where, as an NRK recently discovered, accessing something as elementary as a death certificate is “mission impossible”.

In February 2021, a few days after his father passed away in Kochi, Renjit John, an entrepreneur and IT expert based in the US, began his online attempt to access the death certificate. “My online search led me to the Sevana website maintained by the state government. However, the first thing I noticed on the site was ‘service for Kochi Corporation is not available from February 2015’. It is learnt that Kochi corporation migrated to the service of TCS from the award-winning Sevana software,” John, a PhD holder in computer science, told TOI. “When I tried to enter the corporation’s site, there was a security warning, as the secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate of the local body’s website had expired in March 2020. Ignoring the security warning I went ahead with the search. Though I searched my father’s name, the response from the system was that there was no data regarding the matter. I was left with no option but to start offline efforts,” he recalled.

The next day John went to the private hospital where his father had passed away. “I cross-checked the online application filed by the hospital officials. Then I went to the district court premises to buy eight (why eight!) Rs 50 stamp papers and four Rs 5 court fee stamps only to stand in a long queue to procure it. Then I went to the corporation office at around 1 pm and all the officials had gone for lunch. When the officials came back, it was found that they hadn't got the information from the hospital", he said. A frustrated John recounted the details: "Again, another trip to the hospital to check when they would send the information. Then, some days later a second trip to the corporation to submit the application and a third trip to get the certificate."

A few days later, out of curiosity John once again logged into the corporation's site disregarding the security warning and searched for the death certificate. “Once I entered my father’s details, it pulled his record out with the correct information and a few days later, it did give me an option to download the death certificate. Was the trip to the district court and the corporation office, the hunt for parking, the waiting in queues, and the money that we had spent unnecessary? Were we just too hasty,” he asks.

John's dilemma is not an isolated instance. Hundreds of Kochiites have faced the same problem and the Kochi corporation, despite much-publicised reminders, has done precious little to sort it out. All it has done so far is spend Rs 5 cr for a website whose 'bounce rate' (abysmal click-ability, for the uninitiated) might be it's most creditable feature!