New Birth Certificate Rules in India: India has introduced some important changes to the birth certificate rules that apply to passport applications and identity checks. The new rules will make official papers more streamlined, authentic, and effective. Here is a detail about the important updates every citizen should be aware of.
As per the Passports (Amendment) Rules, 2025, individuals born from October 1, 2023, will be required to provide a birth certificate as standalone evidence of date of birth at the time of application for a passport. This is a deviation from the existing rule that allowed the utilization of school certificates or PAN cards as secondary evidence.
For authenticity, the birth certificates will be eligible from authentic sources, namely:
– Registrar of Births and Deaths
– Municipal Corporations
– Local Government Bodies under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969
The certificates that are procured from unauthorized sources shall not be considered while processing passport applications or other government processes.
Certificates which may be accepted for older applicants
For the candidates born on or before October 1, 2023, the following documents would continue to be evidence of date of birth, i.e.:
– School Leaving or Matriculation Certificates
– PAN Card issued by Income Tax Department
– Driving License
– Voter ID Card
– Government Service Records
This requirement does not penalize senior applicants due to the new requirement of birth certificate and provides provisions for documentations to be elastic.
In addition to a birth certificate requirement, the government has also made privacy updates as follows:
– Elimination of home address from the back page of passports
– Scanning of barcodes such that immigration officers can view the necessary information
– Elimination of parents’ names from the back page to ease documentation for kids who come from divided or separated families
Indian parents needs to proceed and register their infants’ birth certificates on time to save them from future documentation hassles. Citizens need to go through these changes in order to adapt to the new rules and prevent delays in official procedures.
Also Read: Updated Indian Passport Rules 2025: Key Updates and Required Documents
With the strict birth certificate requirements, citizens should know things to prevent documentation backlog. Adherence to these new laws will make verification processes easier, and access to official documents and passports becomes easy.