IN THE HIGH COURT OF MADHYA PRADESH AT JABALPUR BEFORE HON'BLE SHRI JUSTICE VIVEK JAIN

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ON THE 20 OF NOVEMBER, 2025 MISC. PETITION No. 517 of 2025 THE MANAGER Versus SURAJPAL Appearance:

Shri Greeshm Jain - Advocate for the petitioner-company.

Shri Rajesh Kumar Chand- Advocate for respondent-workman.

ORDER By way of present petition challenge is made to award passed by the CGIT cum Labour Court, Jabalpur in Reference Case No.42/2015 instituted by the respondent-workman being aggrieved by the superannuation on 30.06.2006 by treating his date of birth to be 01.07.1946 in place of actual date of birth of 01.05.1955 on basis of which the respondent-workman claimed to be retained in service up to 30.04.2015.

2. The counsel for the petitioner has argued that the CGIT has grossly exceeded its jurisdiction in holding that the respondent-workman is entitled to get benefit of date of birth of 01.05.1955 without carrying out any enquiry into the date of birth, nor directing the petitioner-company to carry out scrutiny into date of birth. It is argued that firstly the case was of undisputed date of birth and even if it was a case of disputed date of birth then also only on account of the fact that no review committee for determining the disputed date of birth was constituted by the petitioner-company, the CGIT could have directed for conducting the said process but could not have directed the respondent-workman to be entitled to a particular date of birth as claimed by him.

3. It is further argued that, in fact, it was not a case of disputed date of birth but it was an undisputed case inasmuch as at the time of entering in service the date of birth was duly entered in the service record i.e. Form-B as 01.07.1946 which though might have been entered by an employee of the company, but was countersigned by the workman himself and once the date of birth was recorded and accepted by the employer at the time of entry in service, it could not have been disputed.

4. It is contended that despite the position of the initial date of birth having been recognized and accepted by the employer, the employee initiated a dispute at the fag end of his career by first filing a writ petition WP No.4895 of 2006 before the court and then initiating proceedings under ID Act. Therefore, it is prayed that the impugned award of the CGIT be set aside.

5. It is further argued that in various other statutory forms also like Form-Q etc. which are to be filled up for getting the benefit of pension and provident fund under the Coal Mines Provident Fund Scheme, the date of birth of the employee was duly mentioned as 01.07.1946 which was even countersigned by the respondent-workman and therefore at that advanced stage the respondent-workman could not have disputed his date of birth and the CGIT has erred in entertaining challenge to date of birth at the fag end of service.

6. Per contra, it is is contended by counsel for the workman that the workman had been disputing his date of birth since very beginning and a service particular Form was issued in the year 1987 by the petitioner- company (Exhibit W-2) as per which the date of birth was mentioned as 01.05.1955 and this was sufficient to infer that there was dispute in the matter of date of birth because there were contradictory records maintained by the petitioner-Company itself.

7. It is further argued that the respondent had for the first time made an application for correction of date of birth on 14.07.1992 (Exhibit W-3) and it was not a case of the workman coming up at fag end of service. Even the Union had submitted an application vide Exhibit W-4 in the year 2002 despite which the company did not carry out review of the disputed date of birth and went on to superannuate the workman on 30.06.2006. It is further argued that there are specific instructions to carry out review determination of date of birth in disputed cases as per Implementation Instructions 76 ("I.I. 76" for short) framed by Coal India Limited on 25.04.1988