Birth certificate

No. You cannot put your name on birth certificate. When she applies for passport you have to give documentary proof that you are married to her mother. Here your name can appear as father. The passport will however be tagged with mothers name till girl is 18 years. School - just make a certificate through agents with you as father name. Give this to school during admission. Your name will be on her school leaving certificate as father. More complex method is to apply for new birth certificate. Mother has to apply. You must give some far away state's hospital as place of birth. Mother can say that you are the father. If it's only for display purposes make some scanned copy and ask any DTP person to modify it. Then print again on same color paper. Obviously this cannot stand up for any scrutiny.

There is no point in trying to change the father's name on the birth certificate as this is not the right way to go about it. What will you achieve in doing this? Likewise you state that you were also married and now that you are divorced. It also means that your ex wife and her new partner will probably try to do the same for your child. This is like a chain reaction and at the end of the day that is more confusion created by changing the father's name on the birth certificate. My understanding is that it is better to be a better stepfather rather than have your name printed on her birth certificate. Remember every child needs to know who their father is whether that father is or have high moral value or not. If lawyers start thinking off scanning the birth certificate then changing it via dtp software then the whole system will crash. Don't even think about getting the name changed on the birth certificate. Help your stepchild achieve high moral values and help her to achieve all the objectives in her life so that she becomes or achieve something in life.

Now there is a proposal to include mother's name in birth certificate and also in passport.  You can make a visit to concerned Registrar of Births and file application for writing mother's name in birth certificate.  You  daughter may  mention only mother's name in passport and other applications.  This process is simple and may not involve any costs.

Thank you for your input Ramesh Singh.