Late applications for correction of personal records require supporting documentation to be valid.

1.According to the petitioner, there was an inadvertent error in the date of birth that had been supplied by him at the time of his joining in service. He wanted to get it corrected after a few years of his entry in service. In order to curb the tendency of Officers to apply for corrections after their entry in service, following the pattern in vogue in respect of Central Government Employees, Ext. P1 order has been passed by the State Government on 30/12/1991. It had been prescribed by Ext. P1 that the time limit for making an application for correction of Date of Birth was five years from the date of entry into service. In respect of the Employees already in service, one year's time had been given for such purpose.

2. Petitioner submits that within one year of Ext. P1. an application as Ext. P2 had been submitted. But he has no claim that at that time his basic records had been corrected by the competent authority. Ext. P2 was not acted upon. The petitioner had been making attempts thereafter to get the date corrected, and was ultimately successful.

3. After crossing the first hurdle, he had again approached the Government for getting such date incorporated in the Service Book. Pointing out that the application so made was not entertainable, Ext. P9 order was issued declining the prayer mainly on the issue of delay, pointing out that

In your case, when the application for correction of date of birth was submitted on 22/9/1992 it was not supported by the attested copy of the S.S.L.C Book together with the correction of date of birth by the authorities concerned. Though the Headmaster has returned the application as early on 24/09/1992, you have not taken any step for correction of date of birth till 19/08/1996. Hence there is laxity on your part. You have filed the application for condonation of delay for the correction of date of Birth in school records only on 22/11/1995, that is, after 3 years of the date of return of the application for correction of Date of Birth.

The review petition filed has also been rejected by Ext. P11. It has also to be noted that such application had stood rejected on 10/11/2000, by Ext. P5 and it was again on a request made to the Minister that this issue was reopened.

4. It is submitted by learned counsel for the petitioner that it should be deemed that the petitioner had made an application for correction as envisaged by Ext. P1 within the time prescribed. He had relied on Ext. P12 Government Order dated 31/03/2003 to show that the Government had granted similar reliefs to one Rajan Nair, who was identically situated. Petitioner also relied on the judgment in State of Kerala v. Gopalan Chettiar (93 (2) KLT 169). It was but a case where the issue had taken place before the date of Ext. P1. Further the facts of this case, as already referred to, is sufficient to distinguish the dictum.

5. The Government Pleader relies onBhaskaran v. State of Kerala (99 (3) KLT SN 22) and Narayanan K v. State of Kerala (ILR 96 (1) Ker. 597) which are more apposite. The latter case carried an observation that submission of a letter for correction, without evidence could well be ignored.

6. The glaring circumstances as against the petitioner are:

i. he did not submit an application as envisaged by Ext. P1 order - the application was imperfect, as it did not contain supportive or authentic materials to be considered as a proper application or to be worthy of being acted upon. That alone is there, and if we ignore it, there is no gross delay.

ii. Even after he knew that it was not acted upon as early as on 24/09/1992, he had filed