"Correction of Date of Birth in Service Records Cannot Be Claimed as a Matter of Right"

This Court is of the opinion that the application for change of date of birth made by the petitioner cannot be considered. Rules, 1984 do not permit for alteration of the date of birth entered in the service records. The entries made by the employee are final and binding and the employee is estopped from disputing the correctness of the date of birth. Rules do not permit alteration of date of birth on the basis of any judgment, decree or order of a Civil Court and no indulgence can be shown. Entertaining the claim for correction of date of birth would completely frustrate the objective behind the Rules, 1984. The petitioner is unable to demonstrate to the satisfaction of this Court either in law or on facts about the claim for alteration of date of birth. In view of the consistent legal position that the onus is on the applicant to prove about the wrong recording of the date of birth in the service records, the claim for the alteration cannot be entertained. It is settled law that “correction of date of birth cannot be claimed as a matter of right.”The petitioner did not make any attempt to get the date of birth corrected in his school records. Upon correction of date of birth in the school records, petitioner could have got the same corrected in the HSSLC as well. However, even this was not done. Therefore, as of today, both in school/college records as well as in the HSSLC, petitioner's date of birth continues to be reflected as 29.03.1953. Permitting petitioner to correct his date of birth in service record would result in incongruous situation where there would be different dates recorded in his school records/HSSLC and service records, which is impermissible.