Civil registration is a continuous process of registering and recoding of vital events namely births, deaths and marriages. The vital registrations are useful primarily as legal documents and secondarily as a source of statistics for administrative purpose. In India, only 83% of births and 68% of deaths are getting registered. Some states in India record more than 90% of its vital events. However, this is not uniform throughout the country. The technical note explains the details and highlights the importance of vital registration.