Byculla-based advocate, Savio Fialho, was recently in for a rude shock when he looked up his birth records online. Fialho entered his registration number and other details in the BMC's online portal for birth certificates, only to find that his name was blank and his permanent address was missing. His time of birth was wrong and his parents' names, and his residential address at the time of birth, was misspelt.

Fialho learnt about the error, when he went to fix "clerical errors" in his father's death certificate. "The certificate didn't have my mother's name as his wife. When I went to get that corrected, one of the main proofs they sought of their marriage was my birth certificate. The one I have is 25 years old and tattered. I applied for a fresh copy at the ward office, but it came with a bunch of errors, which are not present on my original," explained the resident of E ward.