At least 15 couples in the vicinity of Kolkata, who got married during the Covid lockdown, are now faced with the unusual circumstance of having to get married again due to several discrepancies in their marriage registration certificates, rendering rectification impossible.To avoid potential legal problems, these couples have been instructed to seek an annulment of their existing marriages through a district court and subsequently remarry.Marriage certificates, once issued, can solely be revoked or annulled under the jurisdiction of a district court.In a concerning revelation, the Bengal marriage registrars office has identified inconsistencies in over 8,000 marriage certificates issued amid the Covid pandemic. Among this number, at least 15 certificates are beyond the scope of regularisation. These 15 couples, particularly 12 Hindu couples who married under the Special Marriage Act, 1954, and subsequently obtained their certificates within the stipulated 30-day period, are required to obtain fresh marriage certificates.A senior official remarked, “These 15 marriage certificates are legally questionable. For example, in some, names of witnesses are mentioned as ABC. In others, addresses of the witnesses are missing or the telephone numbers provided are non-existent. Prima facie, it appears that the marriage registrars who uploaded these personal data had erred.”Given the irreparable nature of these errors, the couples have been advised to pursue annulment of their marriages through the district court and then remarry in order to secure new certificates, the officials said.At least 15 Kolkata couples misled by marriage registrars during Covid lockdownAn inquiry conducted by the marriage registrars office has exposed that at least 15 couples within the city were misled by the actions of marriage registrars during their nuptials amid the lockdown. A registrar based in the Dunlop area in the North 24 Parganas district has been censured for this misconduct.“Taking advantage of the Covid lockdown, this registrar assured the couples he would take care of the legal formalities without physical verifications. A marriage registrar has to physically verify details of couples and witnesses, but in these cases the registrar failed to carry out physical verification and fed erroneous data,” a senior official told the news outlet IndiaTimes.When confronted with the mounting errors, the 8,000 affected couples turned to the registrars office for redressal. “We can rectify some errors like spellings and dates based on documentary evidence. An edit option in the online portal is accessible to marriage registrars. But in these 15 cases, we cannot cite new witnesses or their addresses or add phone numbers. This is illegal. Hence the only option for them is to remarry or get appropriate direction from the court,” the official said.The digitisation of marriage records in Bengal has been underway since June 1, 2019, effectively phasing out manual registration procedures. During this transition, the state initiated training programs to familiarise registrars with the use of the online portal. However, the outbreak of the pandemic interrupted this process, potentially contributing to lapses in accuracy, as suggested by the official.
