MUMBAI, July 21 -- The BMC's crackdown following the detection of nearly 20,000 allegedly bogus birth certificates dominated discussions in the civic body's House on Monday, with corporators across party lines alleging that while the investigation into the fraud was necessary, innocent citizens were bearing the brunt of delays, technical glitches and procedural bottlenecks in obtaining or correcting their birth certificates. Corporators pointed out that the transition from the BMC's SAP-based registration system to the Civil Registration System (CRS) had resulted in citizens struggling to obtain corrected birth certificates due to technical issues, lack of editing rights at the ward level and a growing backlog of applications. The investigation into the bogus birth certificates added to this, with the BMC ceasing all corrections of birth certificates from April 16, 2026, following the launch of the investigation. Goregaon corporator Ankit Prabhu said the delays were affecting students and families requiring birth certificates for higher education and overseas admissions. He urged the civic administration to expedite the process and requested the mayor to issue a ruling to ensure immediate relief for citizens waiting for corrected birth certificates. Bandra corporator Karen D'Mello highlighted a specific concern affecting the Christian community-that many Christian families traditionally did not finalise a child's name immediately after birth, due to which subsequent amendments were required to the birth certificate. However, under the present system, making such changes had become increasingly difficult, due to which people had to wait six months to a year. Responding to the concerns raised by corporators, additional municipal commissioner (western suburbs) Vipin Sharma explained what was happening. "The CRS was introduced in 2016, but during the transition period, registrations continued simultaneously on both CRS and the BMC's SAP platform," he said. "Until 2023, the CRS did not have a facility to edit birth certificate entries, forcing the administration to rely on SAP for making corrections. It was only in 2024 that CRS introduced an editing module. But the BMC stopped making corrections from April 2026 following the bogus birth certificate scam." Explaining the administrative changes, Harish Bhandirge, chairman of the BMC's public health committee, said that under the earlier SAP system, the medical officer of health at the ward level had the authority to make corrections directly. However, after the migration to CRS, these powers had been centralised under the executive health officer. Bhandirge said that nearly 3,000 correction requests were pending due to the present approval mechanism. Explaining the present bottleneck, Sharma said the office of the registrar, which administers CRS, currently provided only one login ID per district for making changes. As a result, editing rights remain restricted to the executive health officer. "The BMC has now requested the central registrar to delegate changing rights to ward-level medical officers as well," he said. Sharma said that to minimise future errors, the administration had introduced a verification process whereby a draft of the birth certificate was first shown to parents before the final registration. Only after all details are confirmed are the corrections finalised and the certificate officially generated....