IMPORTANT POINTS
Merely having worked in personnel department cannot be a proof of interpolation at the employee’s instance.
Certified copy of certificate issued by statutory body is presumed to be valid unless rebutted with original copy.
Contention that lower rung officials withheld the relevant document from higher authorities cannot be accepted in absence of proof.

Judgment :-

S.B. Sinha, J.

1. Leave granted.

2. The Date of Birth of the respondent is in question in this appeal which arises out of a judgment and order dated 17.04.2008 passed by the High Court of Judicature at Bombay in Writ Petition No. 6962 of 2006.

3. Respondent herein joined the services of the appellant – Corporation on 18.01.1971. She disclosed her date of birth to be 2.10.1950.

4. According to the appellant - corporation, in the year 1975, in response to a memo dated 25.07.1975, the respondent submitted a form giving the details of her date of birth, educational qualification and experience wherein the date of birth was typed as 2.10.1948. However, the year was corrected in handwriting as 1950 by way of interpolation.

5. Respondent was posted in the Personnel Department in various capacities during the period from 14.01.1980 to 6.07.1988.

6. On 16.01.1997, a letter was issued to the respondent for production of copies of school leaving certificate, but she did not submit the same. Again, an office order was issued on 26.02.2004 and 16.06.2004 asking the respondent to submit the documents. However, the respondent did not submit copies of the school leaving certificate and claimed that her original certificates including the school leaving certificate had been misplaced.

7. On 11.04.2005, the respondent was again asked to produce the required documents and the respondent by a letter dated 19.04.2005 informed that she had submitted all the documents at the time of joining the service and these documents had been misplaced.

8. However, the respondent submitted a copy of the birth certificate dated 3.04.2000 issued by the Chief Officer, Panvel Nagar Parishad. The said certificate shows the date of birth of the respondent to be 2.10.1950 as recorded in the register of births maintained by the Parishad.

9. Respondent has also produced various documents issued by the appellant corporation, viz., seniority list, gradation list, retirement list, etc. In all these documents, the date of birth of the respondent was shown as 2.10.1950.

10. The Manager (Personnel) of the appellant - Corporation by an order dated 26.12.2007 held the date of birth of the respondent as 2.10.1948. For arriving at the said conclusion, the appellant - Corporation took into consideration various documents, including application made at the time of admission to the school for the respondent and her sisters, the school leaving certificates of the producer and her sisters, the admission register given by the Head Mistress of the School indicating the date of birth record of the respondent, etc. In all these documents, the date of birth of the respondent was shown as 2.10.1950. The Manager (Personnel) in support of his order dated 26.12.2007 assigned the following reasons:

"She states that the birth certificate issued by the Panvel Municipal Council based on the entry in the v.f. no. 14 Register of Births and Deaths is the proof of the birth date. Similarly, these certificates are issued as per the Birth and Death Act, 1886 and the Maharashtra Birth Death Registration Rules, 1976, as such she also says that these should be accepted as proof. However, when Shrimati Mandwilkar or her sisters were born, the above mentioned Act was not in existence at all. The v.f. no. 14 is a form of the Revenue Department and the same used to be kept with the police patil of the village for census. In this form the names of the girl children born and the dates are written with different handwriting. Therefore, it cannot be said that the name of the same girl has been written against the date of which she was born and therefore this is not a credible proof. As the Panvel Municipal Council has given the birth certificates based on that register only, those also cannot be believed. Shri Narayan Shrirang Surve, the father of Shrimati Mandwilkar has himself admitted his children in school and has stated the exact dates of birth of the daughters instead of telling approximate dates.