Soon, get birth and death certificates within minutes as BMC to adopt Vision AI Vault to digitally archive documents

Mumbai: Crucial civic documents, such as birth and death certificates and marriage registration records, will now be made available instantly at BMC’s E Ward office, thanks to a state-of-the-art digital preservation system called Vision AI Vault. Under the new initiative, old civic records will be classified, scanned, and digitally archived using AI technology.

The move is expected to significantly reduce the waiting time for citizens seeking official documents. Earlier, citizens had to wait a minimum of 30 days to obtain such records, while in some cases, the process could take up to more than a year. With the implementation of Vision AI Vault, documents will be retrievable within seconds, and digitally signed certificates can be generated instantly.

BMC Additional Municipal Commissioner Ashwini Joshi said the E Ward office houses civic records that have survived monsoons, humid weather and the harsh test of time. However, preserving these records physically was becoming increasingly difficult. Over the years, the ink on many documents have begun to fade, pages have become brittle, and several documents remain buried under dust and old cloth bundles. Citizens often had to wait weeks or even months for a single certificate, while the administration struggled to preserve these historical documents, Joshi said.

She added that the Vision AI Vault system will preserve lakhs of handwritten civic records using advanced AI technology that goes beyond conventional Optical Character Recognition.

The system can accurately read cursive handwritten scripts in English, Marathi and Hindi. It can restore faded letters, remove distortions caused by ink blots, and improve the readability of delicate pre-Independence-era records, Joshi said.

The civic administration believes the new system will eliminate tedious manual searches through fragile registers, reduce long queues, and end uncertainty in document retrieval. Officials added that citizens will now experience faster, more accurate and convenient services. The use of AI is also expected to improve transparency, efficiency and security, while helping curb fraudulent certificates.