Delayed Death Registration Mandatorily Requires SDM Order; Bypassing Statutory Route 'Would Amount To Extinguishing The Existence Of A Person': Allahabad HC The High Court of Judicature at Allahabad has dismissed a writ petition seeking a mandamus to command the Registrar (Birth-Death), Nagar Nigam, Varanasi, to issue a death certificate without obtaining a mandatory statutory order from the Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) for delayed registration. The Division Bench, comprising Justice Atul Sreedharan and Justice Vivek Saran, ruled that bypassing the statutory process to issue a death certificate would undermine the purpose of the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969. Background of the Case The petitioner, Naval Kishore Srivastava, married Smt. Madhuri Srivastava in 1962. According to the petitioner, she left him in the same year to reside at her maternal house in Bareilly, where she gave birth to a son named Kamal Kishore Srivastava. The petitioner filed a divorce suit in 1970, which was rejected, and a subsequent appeal was dismissed in 1974. Despite being out of touch, he contributed half his salary to Madhuri from 1975 to 1985. In 1985, Srivastava retired from the Indian Air Force as a Squadron Leader but received no pension contributions for Madhuri. He claimed she died on January 25, 2001, while living at her parents’ house in Varanasi. In 2001, he married Smt. Meera Srivastava, but her name was not recorded in his service records, which still listed Madhuri. In 2011, he applied to remove Madhuri’s name and substitute Meera’s. In 2016, he disclosed his spouse’s name as Meena Srivastava in a pension form, prompting the Directorate of Air Veterans to request family details, including a death certificate for Madhuri.#naval_kishore_srivastava #madhuri_srivastava #high_court_of_judicature_allahabad #sub_divisional_magistrate_varanasi #nagar_nigam_varanasi
