Judicial magistrates restrained from issuing birth/death certificates

A division bench comprising Justice S Nagamuthu and Justice P N Prakash on noting that only Executive Magistrates not below the rank of a Revenue Divisional Officer are empowered to pass such orders under the Act said, “All pending matters are directed to be disposed of with liberty to the petitioners to take recourse to the concerned Executive Magistrates.” 

“Any entry made in the Register of Births and Deaths, pursuant to an order passed by Judicial/Metropolitan Magistrates after January 25, is non-est and such an entry should be deleted,” the bench added. The court also directed the state government to issue necessary guidelines to the Executive Magistrates for dealing with such petitions. 

The fraudulent exploitation of the judicial system through Magistrate Courts came to light when a petitioner had claimed that his son was a minor at the time of committing the offence. He made the plea relying upon the birth certificate of his son, which he had secured based on a Magistrate’s order. 

Shocked over the fraud, the court sought a report from the court registry as to the number of such cases handled by the Magistrate Courts. On finding that over 4.13 lakh instances of registration of births /deaths have been ordered by many Magistrates throughout the state over a period of 21 months (April 1, 2014 to September 30, 2015), the HC directed the inquiry.

The Madras High Court has held that one cannot purchase land without going into the details of the title documents. The observation had come about while dismissing a plea wherein the petitioner had purchased a land belonging to the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) of Indian Railways in Shenoy Nagar.

The first bench comprising Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M Sundar, after observing that the petitioner has not approached the Court with clean hands, said, “According to the petitioner such construction is inadvertent. It is difficult to appreciate how a three-storied structure could inadvertently have been constructed without obtaining requisite sanction.” The petitioner Safitha Banu claimed that she had purchased a vacant land of 1,040 sq. ft from one P Murugesan vide a registered sale deed on May 31, 2010 and constructed a three-storied building. 

While so the Chief Engineer, ICF, had issued eviction cum show cause notice and called upon her to remove the building on October 27, 2014. Based on this, the petitioner filed a writ petition in the HC challenging the above notice which is pending. 

On August 20, 2015 the Executive Engineer of Chennai Corporation issued, a notice for lock and seal and for removal of unauthorised construction. Yet again, the petitioner approached the Court to quash the lock and seal notice.

The Madras High Court has directed the authorities not to disturb the admission of 59 students to the PG programmes in SRM University until further orders. SRM had contended that the students were admitted in February prior to the amendment of MCI’s PG Medical Education (Amendment) Regulations, 2016 including regulation 9A relating to common counselling, which was notified only on March 11, 2017.