India, July 24 -- The West Bengal government has launched a state-wide scrutiny after detecting what it called an abnormally high number of birth certificates issued in 2025 ahead of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll for the 2026 assembly elections.

Officials said orders were issued on Thursday to seize all registers related to birth and death certificates. "We are collecting all the registers that municipalities and panchayats maintained. Data will be gathered, and the registers will be returned to the local bodies after two to three days," said an official who did not want to be named. The data will be scrutinised over three to four months to identify fake certificates.

Chief secretary Manoj Kumar Agarwal call...