Himachal Pradesh High Court: The Bench of Tarlok Singh Chauhan, J. dismissed a petition being devoid of merit and also finding a gross abuse of process of the Court.
In the pertinent case the petitioner after his retirement from the service, filed for correction of his date of birth in the official order. The petitioner originally worked under the administrative control of Beas Control Board (BCB) where at the time of joining he got recorded his date of birth as 15-04-1950. The cases referred to by the Court were Bharat Coking Coal Ltd. v. Chhota Birsa Uranw, (2014) 12 SCC 570 and Union of India v. Harnam Singh, (1993) 2 SCC 162 wherein the issue was expressly dealt with. The petitioner in return produced his school leaving certificate, where the date of birth according to him was 15-4-1954 and not 15-4-1950.
The Court noted certain material facts:
– if the date of birth was 15-04-1954 and not 15-4-1950, as is being vehemently claimed by the petitioner, then it is impossible to fathom as to how his services could have been engaged by BCB at the age of about 15 years and he being minor at that time, under no circumstances, he could have been legally appointed.
-the petitioner, while in service of BCB, did not take any steps whatsoever to get his date of birth corrected and the reason for the same is obvious because in case his service record would have been corrected on the basis of date of birth, then obviously his services were bound to be terminated being a minor.
-after attaining the age of superannuation on completion of 55 years, was granted three successive continuations and even during this period, he did not object to the date of birth.
The Court found this to be normally a fit case where the criminal prosecution should have been ordered against the petitioner for tampering with the official record, however, it refrained from passing any order to this effect taking into consideration that the petitioner has not only retired from service of the respondents, but is currently a senior citizen of about 65 years of age. Thus the petition was dismissed.[Dhani Ram v. Bhakra Beas Management Board, 2019 SCC OnLine HP 251, decided on 05-03-2019]
