New government data released on Wednesday confirms that India experienced approximately two million more deaths during COVID in 2021 than in previous years. Three official reports provide the first government acknowledgment of a death toll that greatly exceeds previously announced COVID-19 mortality figures.
The Office of the Registrar General of India (RGI), functioning under the Ministry of Home Affairs, released the Sample Registration System (SRS) Statistical Report 2021, the Vital Statistics of India Based on the Civil Registration System (CRS) 2021, and the Report on Medical Certification of Cause of Death (MCCD) 2021.
Mortality Data Reveals Discrepancies
According to the SRS report, the crude death rate (CDR) in India rose to 7.5 per 1,000 population in 2021. This represents a significant increase from 6 in 2020 and 6.2 in both 2018 and 2019.
Applying these rates to population projections from the National Commission on Population indicates total deaths of approximately 8.2 million in 2018, 8.3 million in 2019, 8.1 million in 2020, and 10.3 million in 2021.
The CRS data, which records only registered deaths, shows similar figures: around 7 million deaths in 2018, 7.6 million in 2019, 8.1 million in 2020, and 10.2 million in 2021.
Both of these data sources suggest approximately 2 million additional deaths occurred in 2021 compared to pre-pandemic years.
The MCCD report counts 413,580 COVID-19 deaths in 2021 and 160,618 in 2020. Even these numbers are substantially higher than the official tallies reported in government bulletins at the time. The official death toll in daily bulletins for 2021 was just 330,000, and even accounting for later reconciliations, India’s total official COVID-19 death count from 2020 to February 2025 stands at only 530,000.
The MCCD figures themselves likely represent an incomplete picture, as they cover only medically certified deaths – 22% of registered deaths in 2020 and 23% in 2021.
History of Disputed Figures
The newly released government data follows several years of international analysis suggesting India’s COVID-19 mortality was much higher than officially reported.
In May 2022, the World Health Organization estimated that 4.7 million deaths in India were linked to COVID-19 during 2020 and 2021. This figure was approximately ten times higher than India’s official count at that time.
India contested the WHO findings, with the Health Ministry stating: “India’s basic objection has not been with the result (whatever they might have been) but rather the methodology adopted for the same.” Officials criticized the WHO for using what they termed a “one-size-fits-all approach” they believed unsuitable for a country with India’s geographic and demographic complexity.
Before the WHO analysis, researchers at the Center for Global Development had published a study in July 2021 estimating between 3.4 and 4.7 million excess deaths in India from January 2020 to June 2021. The authors described the situation as “arguably India’s worst human tragedy.”
Multiple factors may explain the gap between officially reported deaths and the higher figures now confirmed. During the severe second wave of infections in 2021, healthcare systems in many regions collapsed. Media reports documented bodies floating in the Ganges River and makeshift graves along its banks in Uttar Pradesh state.
A local journalist speaking to the BBC in May 2021 reported a stark contrast in Kanpur: while official records listed 196 COVID-19 deaths between April 16 and May 5, data from seven crematoriums indicated nearly 8,000 cremations in that period.
“All electric crematoriums were running 24/7 in April. Even that was not enough,” the journalist said. “But they only accepted bodies that were coming from hospitals with Covid-19 certificates, and a huge number of people were dying at home, without getting any tests. Their families took the bodies to the outskirts of the city or to neighbouring districts like Unnao. When they couldn’t find wood or a cremation spot, they just buried them on the river bed.”
What explains the drop in estimated deaths in 2020 and the sharp rise in 2021, despite both being pandemic years? One reason could be that the lockdown in 2020 brought down deaths from accidents, as seen in the Accidental Deaths and Suicides report released by the National Crime Records Bureau. Accidental deaths fell from 421,104 in 2019 to 374,397 in 2020, according to NCRB data. Moreover, the pandemic case load itself was significantly higher in India in 2021 than in 2020.
These official reports, released nearly four years after India’s devastating second wave of COVID-19, provide substantial evidence supporting what international health experts have maintained since 2021 – that the pandemic’s impact on India was considerably more severe than official statistics initially indicated.
