JUDGMENT

“What’s in a name”?

Four centuries ago, when, William Shakespeare wrote the classic “Romeo and Juliet,” he felt that name did not matter much. In the present times, if one is asked the same question “What’s in a name”?, the answer would be:

“ Its everything”.

1. In this writ petition, this Court is confronted with an instance where a young girl, who wished for a change of name, stumbled upon an obstacle in the form of CBSE who turned down her request for incorporating the change of name on a hyper- technicality.

2. Young Miss Dinky Gupta, on attaining a reasonable level of maturity, for reasons purely personal to her, decided to change her name to Kashish Gupta. State of Kerala accepted petitioner’s wish to change her name and effected a Gazette notification in 2017 to that effect, as is seen from Ext. P1. It mentions the details of her birth certificate, her Passport number, Aadhar Card number, thereby giving sufficient details as to the identity of the petitioner. Pursuant to the Gazette notification, change of name was carried out in the birth certificate of the petitioner as is revealed from Ext. P2. A “one and the same” certificate was also issued by the village officer s