Hyderabad: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) council meeting witnessed a heated exchange between AIMIM and BJP corporators over fraudulent birth and death certificates being issued in the city.The debate arose after the GHMC disclosed that it had cancelled over 23,000 fake birth and death certificates across the city, with Charminar, Falaknuma, and Mehdipatnam circles being responsible for issuing the highest number of these certificates.BJP corporators pointed out that the majority of these fake documents originated from the Karwan and Mehdipatnam constituencies, as well as Balapur in the Chandrayangutta area. They alleged that Rohingya Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh were allegedly using these certificates to secure Aadhaar cards and passports. However, the AIMIM strongly refuted these claims, dismissing them as baseless. MIM corporators demanded that the BJP refrain from bringing religion into the issue and asserted that both Hindus and Muslims are ‘bhai-bhai.‘ GHMC officials said that they noticed some of the MeeSeva centres were misusing the instant approval system to generate birth and death certificates without uploading requisite relevant documents. FIRs were registered against the respective MeeSeva centres by concerned registrars of all the circle offices. “We terminated 16 health assistants and 15 outsourcing employees who were involved in the issuance of fake certificates,” said S Pankaja, Additional Commissioner (Health).“Except for institutional births/deaths, the GHMC has now discontinued the instant approval system at MeeSeva centres, and other certificates are being issued with thorough verification and approval by the concerned registrar. Further, an OTP per each transaction is being generated and sent to the registrar’s mobile number, so that the login credentials are not misused by the system,” said an official from the health wing, GHMC.A few days ago, CMOH investigated the matter and found that of the 74 reported home births, 38 had been registered at Shishu Vihar, a centre for orphan children. A suo-motto investigation was initiated, which revealed that four of the reported home births had never occurred.After a thorough inquiry, it was found that 65 birth and 8 death unscrupulous certificates were fraudulently issued at Metro Hospital in Tolichowki. Officials said an FIR was filed against the hospital.