A birth certificate is a person's first official recognition by the state, and in Bangladesh it is needed for school admission, a passport and, eventually, a national ID card. The Births and Deaths Registration Act was passed in 2004 and took effect in 2006; it requires every birth to be registered within 45 days. The good news is that the application no longer needs a morning at the union parishad or city corporation office. The form is online.
Step by step
- Go to bdris.gov.bd/br/application. On the first page, choose the address whose registrar office will issue the certificate: the child's birthplace, the permanent address or the current one. Applicants abroad can choose a Bangladesh embassy.
- Click Next. The main form asks for the child's name in Bangla and English (first and last parts separately), date of birth, birth order (which child of the parents), sex, country, division, district, upazila, post office, village or mohalla, house and road, again in both scripts. Type carefully: the certificate will carry exactly what you enter, and corrections cost time and money later.
- Click Next again and enter the parents' names in Bangla and English, their nationality, and their national ID or birth registration numbers.
- Upload scans of the supporting documents, submit, and note the application number and the date shown for collecting the certificate.
- Print the application, take it with the original documents to the registrar office you chose, pay any fee, and collect the certificate.
Documents
For a newborn, the hospital discharge paper or the hospital's birth certificate. To prove the address, any one of: a holding-tax receipt in the parents' or grandparents' name, a national ID card, a passport, a land deed or a land-tax receipt.
Fees
Registration is free within 45 days of birth. From 46 days to five years it costs Tk 25, and after five years Tk 50; corrections to an existing certificate cost Tk 100 and go through the same website.
The two things people get wrong
- The parents must be registered first. For children born after 2001, the system asks for the parents' own 17-digit birth registration numbers, and if a parent's old certificate was never entered into the digital database, the child's application stalls. Check both parents at everify.bdris.gov.bd before you start; if a certificate is not found, the parent must register or "digitise" theirs at their own union office first.
- Online is the application, not the certificate. Nothing is issued until a registrar verifies the papers and signs. If the office says it has no record of your online application, give them the application number; it is in their system.
Once issued, the certificate can be verified by anyone, a school or an embassy, at everify.bdris.gov.bd with the 17-digit number and date of birth, which is the real point of doing it digitally.
