Applications to obtain birth and death certificates from the Calcutta Municipal Corporation are likely to be submitted online from April, a civic official said on Monday.

The move will provide relief to thousands of applicants who queue up at the civic headquarters on SN Banerjee Road or the respective borough offices every day to submit applications for the certificates.

“Applications for corrections can also be made online,” the CMC official said. One can also pay the fee for obtaining the birth or death certificate and upload the necessary documents with the application form online.

“We are trying to open the online application process for birth and death certificates from April. Once the application is accepted, the applicant will be given a date when he or she can come and collect the certificate,” a senior official of the CMC said.

The CMC will continue with the practice of accepting applications offline. Those who will join the queue after the first 200 applicants will be given tokens for a future date, which will guarantee their place among the first 200 on that day.

The CMC issues only 200 birth and death certificates in a day and there is a scramble every day among the applicants to be among the first 200.

Applicants start joining the queue before sunrise and some even spend the previous night outside the civic office to be among the first 200 applicants.

In the existing system, tokens are distributed to the first 200 in the queue after the offices open.

The applications are accepted in the morning and certificates handed over in the afternoon.

Whoever comes after first 200 in the queue have to come back on another day. “There are instances of people failing to be among the first 200 applicants despite multiple attempts,” an official said.

The gap between the demand and supply of certificates has led to a tout raj, sources said. The touts either stand in the queue for those who cannot reach the office early or use their clout to get the certificates issued out of turn.

The civic body increased the number of birth certificates issued every day from 100 to 200 last month. “Even after that we found there were people who had to return unsuccessful for failing to be within the first 200,” the official said.

The birth certificate of a child who was born within five years before the date of application are issued from the office of the borough where the hospital or the nursing home where the child was born is located.

The birth certificates of children born more than five years before the date of application are issued by the CMC headquarters.

A civic official said the online mode would give applicants the choice of place from where they want to collect the certificates — the CMC headquarters or the respective borough offices.