The Delhi Municipal Corporation is un-nerving Delhites. It is wrongly sending people messages of death certificates' approval while none from their families had died.

Vinod Sharma, 56, of South Delhi's Aya Nagar explains: "when one is busy completing his daily work, a message is received of the death registration which certainly shocks you."

He had received such a message though none in his family died. The message to him from South Delhi Municipal Corporation read, "Your request for death registration has been approved. You can download the certificate from the link given below", followed by a link from the civic body's website.

"I didn't even touch the link. Here I am alive and healthy. No one in my family has passed away either," the nonplussed engineer stated. "Nobody has applied for such a certificate and SDMC is sending us a death certificate."

The Aya Nagar councillor Ved Pal raised the issue in the standing committee meeting of the corporation. The standing committee has directed the general public well being division to alter the format of the message despatched to the cellphone quantity registered for the dying certificates.

Leader of the house Narendra Chawla agreed and issued instructions to change the format of the message and made it compulsory to provide details of the applicant who had sought the death certificate.

Chawla further said that a wrong mobile phone number could also be the reason for the erroneous delivery of the message.

Besides changing the message text, Chawla said the health department also needs to make it more flexible for families to download birth/death certificates.

Officials said that slow internet speed and archaic software could also be the reason for the wrong issuance of the message. As many as 5000 applications seeking issuance death/birth certificates were lying pending.