In a a bizarre case, son of a senior IAS officer Rajeev Ranjan of Jharkhand cadre has been found to have three different birth certificates with different birth years. His son Aditya Ranjan, was first reportedly born on October 13, 2013. Then two more birth certificates came out bearing same date but different years – 2015 and 2017.
Interestingly, while government advocates institutional delivery, on all the three occasions, his son is said to have been born at home in different addresses.
The case has put a question mark on the integrity and image of this 2010 batch IAS officer who is serving as special secretary in the planning and development department.
What is the case?
The matter came out in open when Rajeev Ranjan applied for a change in the date of birth in passport of his son. Ranjan had prepared passport of son on the basis of birth certificate bearing date of birth – 13.10.2013. Later the IAS officer applied for a change of date of birth from 13.10.2013 to 13.10.2015 attaching modified birth certificate issued by the municipal corporation.
The passport office sent both the birth certificates for verification to municipal corporation, which verified both the certificates as genuine, causing embarrassment to the IAS officer and putting the system under scanner.
Later on it was also found that a third birth certificate of Aditya Ranjan is also there duly verified by the municipal corporation. Incidentally the third certificate bearing date of birth – 13.10.2017 – was issued when Ranjan was serving as director (birth-death) in statistics department.
The BJP spokesperson of Jharkhand has said that the case is just an example of the corruption prevailing in the state.
“Common man has to run from pillar to post for issuing birth certificate while powerful people can get three at a time,” he said.
Ram Kumar Kaushik is a seasoned journalist with over 25 years of experience across mediums. The architect of this news website, he is also a consultant with several media groups. He was formerly the group managing editor of ITV Network (NewsX, India News and The Sunday Guardian) and its digital products.
