Reuters. Last month, the Indian government dismissed the study as baseless in a notification saying there is a robust system of birth and death reporting.
India's states record deaths from COVID-19 after collating data from their districts. In the last few months, several states have updated the number of deaths, some under pressure from the country's top court.
In most instances, authorities said there were lapses due to delayed registrations and other administrative errors. India is currently in the midst of a third wave of the coronavirus led by the Omicron variant, which some top experts say is already in community transmission although federal officials say most cases are mild.
Last month, the government eased testing norms and told states to drop mandatory testing for contacts of confirmed cases unless they were old or battling other conditions.