ACCESSING LEGAL IDENTITY DOCUMENTS: PROCESSES, CHALLENGES AND BEST PRACTICES

WHAT WERE THE BOTTLENECKS IN THE PROCESS?  According to the team members in Don Bosco Hyderabad and Kolkata, none of the legal identity documents received for the children under their care through Government’s laiddown processes, rather all certificates so far have been accessed through brokers paying the brokerage amounts. In Hyderabad, the GHMC called up meeting with CCIs and informed that they would come to the CCIs for age verifications and issue birth certificates to all children under their care. However, no one turned up so far from GHMC for age verification of the children in Don “How can CCIs manage paying hefty amount to brokers for accessing Bosco Navajeevan Hyderabad. According documents that are actually the right of to the staff, if the applications are children and its government’s submitted through brokers, no one from responsibility to issue!”

Mandal Revenue Office comes to the CCIs - An NGO representative in Hyderabad for verification and certificates are received in two days.  SOS Children’s Village in Kolkata faced challenge in providing Birth Certificates for few children who came from Meghalaya with no documental proof. However, paying Rs.1000 per child to the lawyer for an affidavit would work to access Birth Certificate for these children without showing any proof, though it poses burden on the organization resources for such payment because none of the donors agrees to fund for such things. The staff also pointed out that in cases of children from rural areas with no documental proof from relatives, letters from gram panchayats could help to access the certificates easily. But children in urban areas cannot avail this facility as letter from Councillors were not accepted by the authorities for issuing birth certificates. Team in Don Bosco, Kolkata mentioned that Kolkata Municipal Corporation asked for backdated medical certificates mentioning the children were born on the said dates under the doctor’s supervision.

However, this process may not be ethical and possible because most of the doctors would deny providing such letters. In terms of accessing caste certificates for children, the challenge is to get proof of relation with the extended family members (relatives). As mentioned in the Act, Caste Certificates of the relatives would be helpful document while applying caste certificates for children. Getting proof of relations that needs to be submitted along with caste certificate of relatives or letter from Gram Panchayat is not that easy.  The team member interviewed at Balemane, Bangalore spoke about challenges in case of girls without parents and relatives. The staff had been trying to access their caste certificates through affidavits from Advocate which involves costs as well as lots of time.

The organization also faced challenges to access Caste certificates for the children who are not from Bangalore city and do not have paternal documents. In such cases, the staff had to spend lot of time in reaching out to gram panchayat of child’s birthplace to get a Page | 79