Bell, J.

1. This is an application for a mandamus directing the Director of Public Instruction to entertain an application of the applicant dated the 23rd June, 1942, and to cause the alteration of the date of birth of the applicant from 20th December, 1928, which is alleged to be a mistake to 12th November, 1927, in his school leaving certificate register No. 7067. The motion might have been more happily worded but its intention seems plain enough.

2. The applicant is one B. Ramamurthy, minor by his next friend and father, B.S. Chetti. The respondent is the Director of Public instruction, Madras. The father says in his affidavit that the son was born in Trichinopoly on 12th November, 1927. Domestic troubles arose between himself and his wife. The father had to follow his railway employment in a different part of India to that in which the wife and the children went to live. When the time came for the boy to be sent to school, he was admitted to the second form of the Wardlaw High School, Bellary, in or about June, 1937 and for some reason or another, the mother who took him there and gave the required particulars of his name, birth, etc., gave the date of birth as 20th Decem