Birth Certificate Status and Download on dc.crsorgi.gov.in

The official Civil Registration System portal of the Registrar General of India is dc.crsorgi.gov.in. To download a registered birth certificate, open its Download Certificate page, enter the Application Reference Number from your acknowledgement slip and verify the OTP sent to the mobile number given in the application. The certificate downloads as a PDF. The central portal covers 27 States and UTs plus two partial areas. Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Odisha, Rajasthan, Punjab and most of Delhi are not on its list, so births there are handled through State or municipal systems, listed below.

Checked against the live CRS portal and ORGI circulars: 16 September 2026. RTI Wiki is an independent guide, not the government portal. Enter a child's details only on the official site.

Each number opens a different service on the CRS portal, so start with the one you hold:

• Application Reference Number. It is on the acknowledgement slip generated when the birth was reported, whether by you, the hospital or the Registrar. It opens the Download Certificate page, with an OTP to the registered mobile.
• Registration Number. It is printed on the issued certificate, and each event registered on CRS has a unique one. Use it for certificate verification and for follow-up with the Registrar.
• CRS User ID. It is emailed by websupport.rgi after you sign up as General Public. It opens your account, for reporting a home birth, finishing incomplete forms and tracking applications.

If you have none of these, ask the hospital's birth-registration desk or the Registrar's office where the birth took place. They can find the entry from the date and place of birth and the parents' names.

These steps follow the instructions shown on the portal's own Download Certificate page:

1. Open dc.crsorgi.gov.in/crs/dwnld, the official Certificate Download link. Type the address yourself rather than tapping a search ad.
2. Enter the Application Reference No. exactly as printed, and click Continue.
3. An OTP is sent automatically to the mobile number registered with the application.
4. Enter the OTP in the verification box and click Verify OTP.
5. After successful verification, the certificate downloads automatically in PDF format.

No OTP? The OTP goes only to the mobile number recorded with the application. If you no longer have that number, ask the Registrar to issue the certificate or update the record. Do not pay a website that promises to “bypass” the OTP.

Download link says the certificate is not available? Registration may not be complete. Reporting a birth, registering it and issuing the certificate are separate stages. The acknowledgement slip proves reporting only.

Use this route if you reported a home birth yourself or applied from your own CRS account.

1. Go to the CRS General Public login. Sign in with your user ID and password, or verify your mobile number when the page asks.
2. New user? Choose General Public Signup. The portal requires a user name, email ID, mobile number, date of birth, State, district, sub-district, village or town, and the Registration Unit, which is the office covering the place of birth. Your user ID and a password link arrive by email from websupport.rgi.
3. Open your applications in the account and read the status shown against the Application Reference Number. If the Registrar has sought clarification, answer that specific query and keep the response.
4. Left a form half-filled? Use Incomplete registration form in your account menu.
5. Want the form in your language? Select your regional language as the secondary language before you start filling it in.

Cannot log in? The portal's help section says to check the user ID and password in the email from websupport.rgi, re-enter the image captcha carefully, and use Forgot password with your user ID and email ID to get a reset link by email.

The portal also has a Search & Verify section. Its help text says search needs the State, district, sex and date of birth, and verification needs the Registration Number. What an unlogged-in visitor can see there may be limited.

A banner on the CRS portal says it is open for registering births and deaths in these States and UTs only:

Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Ladakh, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Puducherry, Sikkim, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, plus Delhi Cantonment Board and Telangana (GHMC area).

A birth is registered where it happened, not where you live now. If the birth took place elsewhere, use that State's system:

• Karnataka: eJanMa is run by the Office of the Chief Registrar of Births and Deaths, and the site displays the helpline 1800-425-6578.
• West Bengal: citizen services on Janma-Mrityu Thathya include new registration, Track Application and Download Certificate.
• Tamil Nadu: the portal belongs to the State's Chief Registrar of Births and Deaths.
• Delhi: births in MCD areas go through the MCD portal. Only Delhi Cantonment Board areas use central CRS.
• Kerala, Rajasthan, Punjab and Telangana outside GHMC are not on the central CRS list. Ask the local body or municipality where the birth occurred, and use only the link on the State government's own website.

For the application route in each State, see how to apply for a birth certificate, State by State.

A failed online search does not prove the birth was never registered. Older certificates issued on paper may never have been digitised on CRS.

For the 27 States and UTs on the central portal, ORGI's letter of 12 June 2026 describes a digitisation route:

1. Register on the CRS portal and apply for a digitised copy, uploading a scan of the old paper certificate. You can also apply offline at the Registrar's office.
2. The Registrar checks your certificate against the original birth register and uploads the register page.
3. The District Registrar approves the request with a mandatory e-Signature. ORGI added this safeguard after fake digitised certificates were issued from compromised Registrar logins.
4. The digitised certificate is then sent to you by email or SMS.

Because of that extra approval, digitisation may take longer than a fresh download. If the office cannot find the register entry, ask it to record that in writing before you consider delayed registration.

Yes, it is valid. An RGI circular of 27 July 2015 states that CRS certificates carry a unique registration number and a QR code, and their authenticity can be verified on the CRS website. It calls them “legally valid” proof for government and non-government purposes. It also asks departments not to insist on an original bearing a manual signature. Show that circular if an office refuses a printout.

For anyone born on or after 1 October 2023, the amended Act makes the birth certificate the document that proves date and place of birth for these purposes, as listed in ORGI's CRS FAQ:

• admission to an educational institution
• a driving licence
• preparation of a voter list
• registration of a marriage
• appointment to a Central, State, local body, PSU or statutory body post
• a passport
• an Aadhaar number
• any other purpose the Central Government notifies

If the certificate has a spelling or date error, fix it before using it anywhere. See birth certificate name and error correction and, for a child's Aadhaar, updating date of birth in a minor's Aadhaar.

ORGI's advisory of 13 October 2025 warns that phishing websites that look like the official registration portal have been set up to collect passwords and card numbers and to generate fake birth and death certificates. It advises typing the address on the keyboard rather than finding it through a search engine.

• The only central address is dc.crsorgi.gov.in. Check that nothing comes after gov.in before the first slash.
• Fake certificates are not a shortcut. The advisory notes that criminal cases have already been registered where fake certificates were issued.

• Reporting: a birth should be reported within 21 days, and no fee is charged in that period, per the ORGI CRS FAQ.
• Data entry: from 15 April 2025, Registrars get 10 days instead of 90 to enter a reported event on CRS, so that certificates can issue within seven days. This is from an ORGI notice to Registrars on the CRS portal.
• First certificate: under amended section 12 it is free, and due as soon as registration is complete and within 7 days of completion.
• 21 to 30 days late: registered on payment of the prescribed late fee, under section 13(1).
• 30 days to 1 year: needs written permission of the prescribed authority, the fee and a self-attested document, under amended section 13(2).
• After 1 year: needs an order of the District Magistrate, a Sub-Divisional Magistrate or an authorised Executive Magistrate after verification, under amended section 13(3).
• Child's name: added free within 12 months, and with the prescribed fee up to 15 years from registration, a limit extended from time to time (ORGI CRS FAQ, section 14).
• Extra copies: any number, on paying the fee prescribed by State rules, under section 17.

The seven-day clock starts when registration is complete, not when you apply. Fees are set by State rules; check them with the Registrar. Read the principal Act together with the 2023 Amendment Act. Despite its file name, the second file is the Gazette text of the Amendment Act. The amendments took effect on 1 October 2023, per the commencement notification.

ORGI has also asked government hospitals, where more than half of institutional births take place, to hand the birth certificate to the mother before she is discharged (circular of 12 June 2025). That is an instruction to push for, not a legal deadline. Ask the hospital's registration desk before you leave.

If the Registrar or District Registrar takes an action or passes an order against you, such as a rejection, the Act gives you an appeal:

• Against the Registrar, appeal to the District Registrar. Against the District Registrar, appeal to the Chief Registrar of Births and Deaths of the State.
• File within 30 days of the action or of receiving the order. The appellate authority must decide within 90 days. This is section 25A.
• Use Form 15 under rule 16A of the Model RBD (Amendment) Rules, 2024, or your State's equivalent. ORGI's letter of 16 April 2026 told Registrar offices to display this appeal route and Form 15. It also noted that people often write to the Registrar General of India directly, when the right authority is the State's Chief Registrar.

For a delay with no written order, first ask the office for the current stage in writing. Then use an RTI request for the records. For the full delay playbook, see birth certificate application delayed and RTI for a birth certificate delay.

Send it to the Public Information Officer of the municipality, panchayat or health department that holds the record. RTI gets you records; it does not issue the certificate, and an appeal deadline keeps running meanwhile. See how to file an RTI application, draft with the RTI assistant, or read The RTI Playbook.

For the 27 States and UTs on the central system, it is dc.crsorgi.gov.in. The download page is dc.crsorgi.gov.in/crs/dwnld. It asks for the Application Reference Number and an OTP sent to the registered mobile. Births in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Odisha, Kerala, Rajasthan, Punjab and most of Delhi are handled outside the central portal.

It is the number on the acknowledgement slip generated when the birth is reported on CRS, by you, the hospital or the Registrar. It identifies the application, not the registered birth. You need it to download the certificate. The registration number printed on the certificate is different.

If you applied from your own CRS account, log in as General Public and open your applications. For a hospital birth, ask the hospital's registration desk. Otherwise ask the Registrar where the birth took place to find the entry from the date and place of birth and the parents' names.

The portal's help text says search needs the State, district, sex and date of birth, not a name alone. A name can then narrow the results. Do not use unofficial “name search” websites, which ORGI warns can be phishing sites.

Every CRS certificate has a unique registration number and a QR code. The portal's help text says entering the registration number in the verify option shows the certificate. The QR code on the certificate is meant for checking authenticity against the CRS website. If a verification fails, ask the issuing Registrar to confirm the entry.

The OTP goes only to the mobile number recorded with the application. Check the network and any SMS blocking. If the number is no longer with you, the Registrar has to update the record or issue the certificate directly.

The medical officer in charge of the hospital, or a person they authorise, is responsible for reporting institutional births. Ask the hospital for its reporting reference and the Registrar it reported to. Do not file a separate home-birth report for a hospital birth.

Yes. The RGI's 27 July 2015 circular says CRS certificates with a QR code are legally valid for government and non-government purposes, and that offices should not insist on a manually signed original. For people born on or after 1 October 2023, the birth certificate is the prescribed proof of date and place of birth for school admission and passports.

• CRS homepage, Download Certificate page and General Public login, viewed 15 and 16 September 2026.
• ORGI CRS FAQ: reporting period, free copy, name insertion, the list of uses for people born on or after 1 October 2023, and the section 25A appeal.
• ORGI circulars: validity of CRS certificates, 27 July 2015; phishing websites, 13 October 2025; grievance and appeal awareness, 16 April 2026; digitisation of old certificates, 12 June 2026; certificate before discharge, 12 June 2025.
• Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, RBD (Amendment) Act, 2023 and commencement notification.