Genuineness and relevance of documents, as well as the method and manner of proving one’s age depends on a host of variables.

The petitioner is a workman without much of educational background; respondent, a Colliery Company. In this litigious combination, the leitmotif is the dispute of date of birth. This problem is a proverbial phoenix that always rises from the adjudicatory residuae ashes, notwithstanding numerous judicial pronouncements on this aspect.

The petitioner, a Sub-Station Attendant, initially secured his employment on 24.04.1977 as a Badili Filler in the respondent company. Having secured promotions as Coal Filler in 1979 and as General Mazdhoor in 1985, later eventually as Sub-Station Attendant, the petitioner is said to be presently working in the said position.

The grievance of the petitioner is that his date of birth was not recorded in the service records in accordance with what has been reflected in his school certificates even prior to his joining the service-15.06.1958. Without the petitioner’s knowledge, it was recorded as 23 years as on 23.04.1977 in all the records of the respondent’s company, such as Service Book, B-Register and I.D.Card etc., which is without any basis. After making initial representations, having come to know of the discrepancy, the petitioner once again made a representation on 31.08.2012 to the authorities concerned seeking rectification of the date of birth in the service records in tune with the school records, which have already been submitted to the respondent company.

Despite the petitioner’s representations, the respondents seem to have intimated the petitioner through letter dated 15.05.2013 that he would be attaining the age of superannuation by 24.04.2014 i.e., 60 years, and that he would be retired from service on 30.04.2013. Aggrieved thereby, the petitioner approached this Court by filing the present Writ Petition.

Sri V. Sree Ranga Rao, the learned counsel for the petitioner, has underlined his submissions with an initial exhortation that the issue raised in this Writ Petition may be viewed in the backdrop of inadequate education of the petitioner. He has submitted that most of the workmen with illiteracy or semi-literacy in the company are always at the mercy of the respondent officials even to have any statutory forms filled at the time of their entry into service or even subsequently. In their eagerness to secure the service benefits, statutory or otherwise, the workmen, when required to submit many forms, depend on the officials of the Company to have them filled up. Most of the times, submits the learned counsel, they must be signing on the dotted lines and in the blank forms, which are later filled up by those officials. It is, therefore, not always correct to rely on those forms and hold that there has been an admission on the part of the workmen as to the correctness of what was written in those forms.

Expatiating further, the learned counsel has stated that the petitioner had the minimal qualification of 7th class when he entered into the service. According to the learned counsel, the petitioner had appeared for 7th class in the year 1972 i.e., 5 years prior to his securing the employment, and at the very inception, he produced before the authorities the certificate issued by the District Educational Officer, Karimnagar. He has further submitted that the petitioner has passed SSC in October, 1997 and in the said Secondary School Certificate, issued along with the Marks Memorandum by the Board of Secondary Education, as has been reflected in 7th class Certificate, the date of birth was recorded as 15.06.1958.

Placing reliance on Clause (i) of the Implementation Instruction No.76 of the Joint Bipartite Committee for Coal Industry (JBCCI), which is said to be governing the service conditions of the workman of the respondent company, the learned counsel would contend that the date of birth recorded in the certificate issued after passing the matriculation or equivalent examination shall be treated as correct date of birth and it shall not be altered under any circumstances.