- I Paid A Bribe
- 10 years ago
- 2528 views
We paid INR 620 bribe for marriage registration. We had to visit…
- Stamps and Registration
- Marriage Registration
- Paid INR 620
We paid INR 620 bribe for marriage registration.
We had to visit the Registrar office for more than 10 times and we were delayed by more than a month for our Marriage registration. Not a Single time did the Marriage registrar give proper information about proofs required.
As per http://www.tnreginet.net/english/tel02.asp, the following are the proofs required
1. Marriage: Wedding invitation or temple marriage receipt or any proof of marriage solemnization
2. Residence: employee ID card or ration card or passport/visa
3. Age: Birth certificate or school/college certificate or passport/visa
We provided birth certificate, school TC and driving license as age and residence proofs for groom; Passport, CBSE 10th school certificate and driving license for the bride and for Marriage proof we gave Wedding invitation and Marriage Solemnization Certificate Signed by the Priest and attested by a notary Public.
Registrar did not accept these proofs. Irrespective of the Proofs submitted, He demanded ration card and school TC for bride – He said Passport is not a valid enough ID proof. After a couple of more visits, he accepted passport, but demanded to replace Priest name with Groom’s Father (In whose presence the marriage was solemnized), else to bring the Priest to the registrar office.
He also demanded community certificate for bride and groom. Bride being Brahmin did not have community certificate but this was not accepted by the registrar. Finally he asked us to remove the community name of the Bride too from the registration form.
In a similar Fashion he dragged on the procedure for more than one month, each time giving a new demand of ID proofs, attestation of ID proofs by notary public, self attested ID proof of witnesses, etc. He will not tell all the required documents in a single visit. Each visit, he would ask for a new document and we had to make multiple visits before the marriage could finally be registered.
On the day of registration He again did not accept the form because we used “#” to specify house number and passport used “No.” to specify house number. He made us rewrite the form. Adding further to the agony, despite two of the witnesses being the groom’s parents, the registrar did not accept the family ration card as ID proof and demanded Independent ID proofs for each witness during registration.
He also made us do the filing and clerical work required for the registration.
After going through all the forms, he asked us to pay INR 820. We paid. The receipt he gave us was only for INR 200. When we enquired, he told us that INR 500 for “office” and INR 100 extra for the forms and INR 20 for taking thumb impression. That is when we knew that the extra INR 620 was a bribe and actual cost of registration was only INR 200.
Frustrated that we paid extra money and also paid multiple visits to the registrar office, we demanded why he never gave us information in a single visit, he told us that this entire problem was only because we did not come through a broker. He also told us that he kept aside all his other work and did us a favour answering our queries.
This was a very bad experience and we ended the happy experience of our wedding on a frustrated note.