The avowed objective behind enacting the Goa Reconstruction of Registers and Records Act, 2005 was to recreate damaged records, especially marriage, births, deaths lying mutilated at the offices of the taluka Sub-Registrar offices.
Three years later, the government framed the Rules in 2008 to take the Act to its logical conclusion and give relief to citizens affected by the mutilated records.
A decade down the line and the Goa Reconstruction of Registers and Records Act is still lying in cold storage despite the fact that citizens are crying for justice with records in the Sub-Registrar’s Offices either mutilated or missing.
And, it is a sheer coincidence that incumbent Deputy Chief Minister Francis D’Souza was the State’s Law Minister when the Bill was tabled in the House to become a law. When Herald contacted the Deputy Chief Minister to shed light on the decade long delay in implementing the provisions of the Goa Reconstruction of Registers and Records Act, 2005, he recalled that the Act was passed 10 years ago when he was the State’s Law Minister.
“I will check up with my department why citizens cannot get justice under the Act in respect of the mutilated records. If any officer is required to be designated as officers empowered to reconstruct or recreate the records, the government will issue the notification authorising the officials to act as designated offices,” D’Souza said.
A senior official pointed out that the Act could not be brought into force simply because the government of the day neither appointed the relevant officers nor designated them as authorised officers under the Act.
This brings to the fore a pertinent question as to why the government has not acted quickly to appoint or designate an officer to act under the Act when the Sub-Registrar’s offices are crying for attention over the last one decade.
