Lucknow, Sep 18 (IANS): Newborns at government health facilities in Uttar Pradesh will now be issued birth registration certificates immediately after delivery without the need for parents to apply for the same.

With this development, Uttar Pradesh has become the first state to implement suo motu birth registration for government health institutions.

For this, the state government has integrated its MaNTrA (Maa Navjaat Tracking) app with the birth registration system using digital technology.

Partha Sarthi Sen Sharma, the Principal Secretary of Medical Health, said, "The Directorate of Census Operations, Lucknow, has partnered with the Uttar Pradesh National Health Mission (NHM-UP), UNICEF, and the Office of the Registrar General of India, Delhi, to facilitate the generation of automatic birth registration certificates at government facilities."

Initially, 1,000 facilities will provide this service in the state, and the number will gradually increase, according to officials.

Explaining the procedure, the principal secretary stated that the civil registration system application programming interface retrieves data for 17 fields from the Maa Navjaat Tracking app (MaNTrA), managed by NHM-UP.

The data is then configured into a birth certificate, digitally signed by the hospital registrar.

"Birth certificates can now be handed over to the parents of the newborn within hours of birth," he added.

"We will strive to roll out this facility in all government facilities in the coming months so that an automatic birth registration certificate is issued on the spot in each case," he added.