IMPORTANT POINT
Correction of date of birth in service records cannot be claimed as a matter of right and should not be entertained at the fag end of the career.

JUDGMENT :

Easwaran, J.

Respondents in Original Application No.469/2022 before the Central Administrative Tribunal, Ernakulam Bench are before this Court in the present Original Petition. The Original Application was filed by the respondent herein seeking to challenge Annexures-A14, A15, A17, A19, A21, A24, A25, A28 and A31 orders. The grievance of the applicant before the Central Administrative Tribunal was that the petitioners herein rejected his request made by him for correction of date of birth entered in the service records.

2. The facts pleaded in the Original Application show that the applicant before the Central Administrative Tribunal entered service as an Engineering Assistant on 07.11.1989. At the time of his appointment, the date of birth entered in the service records as per the entries in the SSLC Book was 01.06.1964. Later, the applicant claimed that his actual date of birth is 02.07.1964. Further, it is contended that the said fact came to the knowledge of the applicant only when he took a copy of the birth certificate on 10.04.2007. Immediately thereafter, he approached the State Government for correction of the date of birth in the SSLC records, which was also accepted on 27.06.2007. Later, the applicant claims that the entries in his SSLC Book was corrected as per the order dated 13.01.2012 and consequent to the correction in the SSLC Book, the applicant before the Central Administrative Tribunal submitted representation to the Director of All India Radio, Vazhuthakadu on 16.7.2013 produced as Annexure-A13 before the Central Administrative Tribunal. The representation was thereafter answered on 5.8.2013, which is evident from Annexure-A14. Though in Annexure-A14 representation was forwarded, the authorities prima facie entertained an opinion that since the applicant has sought for correction of date of birth in the service records after five years after the date of entry into service, the same is not in accordance with the instructions contained in DoP&T Office Memorandum No.19017/2/92-Estt(A) dated 19.05.1993. Despite this, the representation was forwarded for further consideration. After a series of inter-departmental communications finally by Annexure-A24 dated 04.02.2015 the Deputy Director (Administration), India’s Public Service Broadcaster Directorate General, All India Radio, New Delhi addressed to the Director of All India Radio, Thiruvananthapuram informing him that the application for correction of date of birth in the service records of the respondent/applicant herein stood rejected and the decision of the competent authority may be communicated to the respondent/applicant. Later, on 09.03.2015, the request for replacement of Aadhar card submitted by the respondent/applicant was also rejected, since the date of birth entered in the service records as well as the document now sought to be replaced were found to be different.

3. Consequent to the above proceeding, it was noticed by order dated 06.05.2015 that the respondent/applicant had not registered himself in the bio-metric attendance system. Therefore, he was further directed to register himself for the bio-metric attendance system immediately. To the said order, the respondent/applicant replied under Annexure-A27 dated 22.05.2015 that his application for correction of date of birth in the service records is still pending and that the date of birth in the Aadhar Card and other related documents was corrected based on the corrected date of birth. After a series of further proceedings, by Annexure-A28 dated 06.01.2020, it was ordered that it is not possible to accept the documents with the change of date of birth, once the date of birth in the service records had been recorded. However, to ascertain as to whether there is a change in the existing Rules, the matter was placed before the Director General. In the meantime, the petitioner also invoked the mechanism provided for public grievance, which was also turned down by order dated 04.08.2022, whi