A file photo of IAS officers Hephsiba Rani Korlapati and Ujjwal Kumar Ghosh at the marriage registration office in Hubballi in Karnataka.
| Photo Credit: Photo for representation only
In just about seven months after the launch of the online marriage registration facility, nearly 48% of the registrations under The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, in Karnataka have been done online. While online registration in a number of districts outstripped the offline registration at sub-registrar’s offices, in some districts offline registration continues to remain popular.
The online facility to provide ease to those registering marriages based on Aadhaar authentication was introduced in February. Since then, as many as 33,059 marriages out of the total 69,456 marriages registered under the Hindu Marriage Act in Karnataka were done online, according to data from the office of the Inspector-General of Registration and Commissioner of Stamps.
| Type | Offline | Online | Total |
| The Hindu Marriage Act | 36,427 | 33,059 | 69,486 |
| The Special Marriage Act | 2,905 | – | 2,905 |
| Special Marriages of other form | 2,946 | 466 | 3,412 |
Aadhaar authentication is used to make the process robust and prevent identity impersonation and fraudulent registration as per Rule 5 of the Aadhaar Authentication for Good Governance (Social Welfare, Innovation Knowledge) Rules, 2020, under the Aadhaar Act, 2016.
Special marriages
For marriages to be registered under the Special Marriage Act, 1954, the application process has been made online. But, the couple will have to visit the sub-registrar’s office to register the marriage. As many as 2,905 marriages were registered under the Special Marriages Act in the same period.
Of the total 3,412 special marriages of other forms (delayed registration of marriage), 466 have been done online.
In all, 75,803 marriages were registered in Karnataka between February and August, of which 33,525 were registered online.
In Bengaluru, the online registration of marriages under The Hindu Marriage Act outnumbered the marriage registration in the sub- registrar’s office. Of the total 10,063 marriages registered across five registration districts of Basavanagudi, Gandhinagar, Jayanagar, Rajajinagar, and Shivajinagar, 7,434 were registered online.
However, in some districts, adoption of online marriage registration has been slow. For example, in Belagavi district, which registered 9,652 marriages after the launch of the facility, just about 1,189 marriages were registered online. Haveri and Dharwad districts have also reported higher offline registration than online registration.
The Supreme Court mandated registration of marriage in 2006. About 1.6 lakh marriages were registered in 2021-22 and 2.04 lakh marriages were registered in 2022-23.
Ease of registration
Revenue Department sources said the facility was introduced to provide ease of registering marriage without physically visiting the sub-registrar’s offices. This was also seen as a measure to encourage people to register their marriages as just about 30% of marriages in Karnataka get registered, sources said.
Acknowledging that in some areas adoption of the facility has not been good, Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda told The Hindu: “Though good numbers have come in, I am still not satisfied. While we have made it simpler for registration, people are still not coming forward to register. Having a legal document gives protection, especially for women. There is also a lack of awareness about online availability of the facility. We have to work to improve on awareness.”
Published – September 05, 2024 10:24 am IST
