Claim: Pakistan increased the death certificate fee from Rs 300 to Rs 1,200 from 1 August 2026.
Fact: No nationwide increase from Rs 300 to Rs 1,200 took effect on 1 August 2026. The official fee schedules and records reviewed by Soch Fact Check do not support this claim.
On 26 July 2026, Facebook page Verified Pakistan Today shared a post claiming that the fee for obtaining a death certificate in Pakistan would increase from Rs 300 to Rs 1,200 from 1 August.
“Starting August 1, the fee for obtaining a death certificate in Pakistan will increase fourfold, rising from Rs. 300 to Rs. 1,200 under the newly approved fee schedule,” the caption stated. The accompanying graphic repeated the claim and showed a man holding a document inside a NADRA-branded office.
Screenshot of a Facebook post by Verified Pakistan Today, shared on 26 July 2026.
Similar claims appeared on Facebook and Instagram in English and Urdu. The posts referred to a “newly approved fee schedule” but did not identify the authority that approved it or cite an official notification.
Soch Fact Check investigated whether Pakistan had introduced a nationwide increase in the death certificate fee from Rs 300 to Rs 1,200 from 1 August 2026.
Fact or Fiction?
Deaths in Pakistan are registered and death certificates are issued through provincial and local civil registration systems, while Islamabad has its own arrangements. NADRA says its Provincial Civil Registration and Management System is deployed across more than 11,000 union councils under agreements with provincial and local governments.
The schedule under Rule 21 of the Punjab Local Government (Registration of Births and Deaths) Rules 2025 lists the fee for the registration and issuance of a birth or death certificate as “Nil”. It lists Rs 1,000 for registering a death more than seven years late and Rs 200 for a duplicate certificate. It does not list a Rs 1,200 charge for the registration or issuance of an ordinary death certificate.
The rules state that free issuance may be reviewed after one year. However, as of 17 August 2026, the Punjab Local Government Department’s notifications page continued to list the 2025 Birth and Death Rules and did not list a subsequent birth or death registration notification introducing a Rs 1,200 fee from 1 August 2026.
Punjab’s published information is not entirely consistent. The province’s e-Khidmat page lists a Rs 200 death certificate issuance fee within 60 days, while the Gazette schedule lists ordinary registration and issuance as free. However, neither source lists a Rs 1,200 fee or states that the charge increased from Rs 300 to Rs 1,200 on 1 August 2026.
Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also publish different fee arrangements. An Associated Press of Pakistan report published on 6 October 2025 reported that the Sindh cabinet waived the death certificate registration fee at municipal, union council, and town committee levels. The provincial government also agreed to bear NADRA’s service charges so that citizens could obtain death certificates free of cost.
Rule 47 of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Births, Deaths, Marriages and Divorce or Dissolution of Marriages (Registration and Certification) Rules 2021 states that there is no fee for registering a vital event. The accompanying schedule lists Rs 100 for ordinary certificate issuance and Rs 300 for urgent service.
On 28 July 2026, official LG&RDD field office pages circulated a department press release titled “Rebuttal of False News”, which denied reports of an increase in the death certificate fee. It stated that the fee remained Rs 100, or Rs 145 through the mobile app.
These published arrangements, including Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s direct rebuttal of the July 2026 reports, do not support the claim of a nationwide increase from Rs 300 to Rs 1,200 from 1 August 2026.
The ICT Administration’s death registration page lists a processing fee ranging from Rs 200 to Rs 1,500, “depending on age of child”, but does not explain the individual charges within that range. The same wording and range appear on the administration’s birth certificate page. The death registration page does not list Rs 1,200 as a separate fee category, state that the fee has increased from Rs 300, or mention that a new schedule took effect on 1 August 2026.
The published range leaves it ambiguous whether a fee of Rs 1,200 could apply in a particular circumstance in Islamabad. However, it does not support the specific claim that Pakistan introduced a nationwide increase in the death certificate fee from Rs 300 to Rs 1,200 from 1 August 2026.
Virality
Soch Fact Check identified at least 18 Facebook and Instagram posts repeating the claim in English and Urdu.
As of 7:23 pm on 17 August 2026, the Facebook posts had collectively received at least 766 reactions and 294 shares. The Instagram posts and reels had collectively received at least 71,192 likes and 2,677 shares.
Several pages used nearly identical wording about a “newly approved fee schedule”, but none provided an official notification or named the authority responsible for the alleged increase.
Conclusion: Social media posts falsely claimed that Pakistan increased the death certificate fee from Rs 300 to Rs 1,200 from 1 August 2026. Official provincial and local records do not support any such nationwide increase. Soch Fact Check therefore concludes that the claim is false.
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