The main legal point established in the judgment is that alteration of date of birth in service records must be sought within the prescribed time limit, and the court relied on established legal principles from various Supreme Court decisions to support its decision.

N. Paul Vasanthakumar, J.

1. This Writ Petition is filed challenging the order passed by the Central Administrative Tribunal in Original Application No.3989 of 2011 dated 29.6.2011, wherein the petitioner challenged the order dated 18.2.2011 rejecting his request seeking alteration of date of birth and for a direction to the respondents to alter the date of birth of the petitioner as 22.12.1952 instead of 4.6.1951 in his service records, with all consequential benefits and forbear the respondents from superannuating the petitioner before 31.12.2012.

2. The Tribunal, noticing the fact that the petitioner entered into service in Indian Army in the year 1973 and considering the Rule, namely F.R.56, which states that Government servant can seek alteration of date of birth within 5 years of entry into service and the application seeking alteration of date of birth having been filed on the verge of retirement on 30.6.2011, dismissed the Original Application as well as the Review Application filed by him.

3. The only grievance expressed by the petitioner is that on 4.8.1995, he submitted a representation before the Income Tax Department, where he was employed from the year 1993 and therefore that application should be treated as application, filed within five years of entry into service. The said ground cannot be taken as a valid one, as the petitioner was selected in the Income Tax Department as an Ex-serviceman and while entering into Army Service, the date of birth given by the petitioner was 4.6.1951 based on the entry made in the SSLC Book and the same was not corrected. There may not be contra entries, one date of birth in the Army service and another date of birth in the Income Tax Department. Therefore, the said submission made by the learned counsel for the petitioner is not sustainable. Having regard to the fact that the petitioner relied on horoscope, based on which Srilankan authority has issued the Birth Certificate, the same cannot be taken as a valid document.

4. The Supreme Court in the decision reported in (1993) 2 SCC 162 [UNION OF INDIA Vs. HARNAN SINGH] considered the similar issue and in paragraph 7, it is held as follows:

"7. A Government servant, after entry into service, acquires the right to continue in service till the age of retirement, as fixed by the State in exercise of its powers regulating conditions of service, unless the services are dispensed with on other grounds contained in the relevant service rules after following the procedure prescribed therein. The date of birth entered in the service records of a civil servant is, thus of utmost importance for the reason that the right to continue in service stands decided by its entry in the service record. A Government servant who has declared his age at the initial stage of the employment is, of course, not precluded from making a request later on for correcting his age. It is open to a civil servant to claim correction of his date of birth, if he is in possession of irrefutable proof relating to his date of birth as different from the one earlier recorded and even if there is no period of limitation prescribed for seeking correction of date of birth, the Government servant must do so without any unreasonable delay. In the absence of any provision in the rules for correction of date of birth, the general principle of refusing relief on grounds of laches or stale claims, is generally applied to by the courts and tribunals. It is nonetheless competent for the Government to fix a time limit, in the service rules, after which no application for correction of date of birth of a Government servant can be entertained. A Government servant who makes an application for correction of date of birth beyond the time, so fixed, therefore, cannot claim, as a matter of right, the correction of his date of birth even if he has good evidence to establish that the recorded date of birth is clearly erroneous. The law of limitation may operate harshly but it has to be app