Nutan Kumari vs Cbse
2012 Latest Caselaw 528 Del

*          IN THE HIGH COURT OF DELHI AT NEW DELHI

+                          W.P.(C) 1277/2010

                                                      Decided on: 25.01.2012
IN THE MATTER OF
NUTAN KUMARI                                               ..... Petitioner
                           Through: Mr. Mukesh Gupta, Advocate with
                           Mr. Keshav Thakur, Advocate

                     versus

CBSE                                                       ..... Respondent
                           Through: Mr. Amit Bansal, Advocate


CORAM
HON'BLE MS.JUSTICE HIMA KOHLI


HIMA KOHLI, J. (ORAL)

1. This petition has been preferred by the petitioner praying

inter alia for directions to the respondent/CBSE to decide her

representation dated 24.04.2009, to correct her date of birth as recorded

in the Secondary School and Senior Secondary School Certificates issued

to her in the year 2004 & 2006, from 20.02.1986 to 12.10.1988, and

further issue corrected certificates to her.

2. In a nutshell, the facts of the case as set out in the writ

petition are that the father of the petitioner, during his tenure with the

Indian Army, was posted at different stations from time to time, due to

which, his family members including the petitioner had to shift their place

of residence and her school on a number of occasions. In the year 2004,

the petitioner had passed her secondary school examination from

Kendriya Vidyalaya Ballygunje, Kolkata, (West Bengal) under the

respondent/CBSE. Thereafter, in the year 2006, the petitioner appeared

for her class XII examinations from Kendriya Vidyalaya No.1, Gandhi

Nagar, Jammu under the respondent/CBSE. The respondent/CBSE had

issued two certificates to the petitioner, the first one was upon her

passing class X examinations in March 2004 and the second one was upon

her passing class XII examinations in March 2006. In the year 2009, the

petitioner took admission in a five year law course in Modern Law

College, Ganeshkhind, Pune-53, University of Pune.

3. It is stated by the learned counsel for the petitioner that

presently the petitioner is studying in the fifth and final year of the law

course and she is simultaneously preparing for various competitive

examinations. As per the petitioner, during the course of making

preparations to appear in the said examinations, she checked her school

leaving certificates and other related documents and found that although

her correct date of birth is 12.10.1988, the same had been incorrectly

recorded by the respondent/CBSE in the class X certificate as 20.02.1986.

Immediately thereupon the petitioner claimed that she had approached

the Law College, Pune University with a request to carry out necessary

correction in its records but the authorities expressed their inability to do

so till the respondent/CBSE carried out necessary correction in its records.

4. It is averred in the writ petition that the petitioner had paid a

number of visits to the office of the respondent/CBSE at Delhi and finally

submitted a representation dated 24.04.2009, seeking correction of her

date of birth in its records. On 10.12.2009, the petitioner also got a

notice published in the Gazette of Maharashtra notifying her changed date

of birth as 12.10.1988. It is the case of the petitioner that the date of

her birth has been wrongly noted in the records of the respondent/CBSE

as 20.02.1986 whereas her actual date of birth is 12.10.1988 and the

said fact can be verified from the documents enclosed with the writ

petition. The petitioner claims that she has not taken any undue

advantage of the incorrect recording of her date of birth and, therefore,

directions be issued to the respondent/CBSE to carry out the necessary

rectification in its records. In support of his argument that the petitioner

is entitled to change of date of her birth in Class X Certificate issued by

the respondent/CBSE, counsel for the petitioner relies upon the judgment

in the case of Kumari Para vs. Director, Central Board of Secondary

Education reported as AIR 2004 Delhi 310 and a decision of the

Supreme Court in the case of Narinder Kaur vs. Punjab & Haryana High

Court & Ors. decided on 04.02.2011 and reported as (2011) 11 SCC 53.

5. Counsel for the respondent/CBSE opposes the present petition

and states that the petitioner is dis-entitled from claiming the relief of

change of date of birth so belatedly and such a request cannot be acceded

to in view of Byelaws 69.2, which stipulates that any request for

correction in the date of birth has to be made within a period of two years

of the date of declaration of her result of class X examination. It is

submitted by the learned counsel that the petitioner had passed her class

X examinations in the year 2004, whereas she had made a representation

to the respondent/CBSE for correction of her date of birth after a period of

five years, on 24.04.2009, and that the respondent/CBSE does not permit

a change in the date of birth in its records and furthermore, it permits

such a correction only in circumstances arising out of a clerical error,

which is not the case here.

6. It is further clarified by the counsel for the respondent/CBSE

that in any case, the petitioner could not have approached the CBSE

directly with a request for correction and as per the CBSE Examination

Byelaw 69.2, it was for the petitioner to have submitted an application for

carrying out such a correction to the head of the school, who could have

forwarded the same to the respondent/CBSE along with the relevant

documents. He states that the aforesaid procedure was not followed by

the petitioner and for reasons best known to her, she has not even

impleaded the school, from where she had passed class X examination as

a co-respondent in the present proceedings. Nor has the petitioner

placed on record the requisite documents in support of her contention

that the school had erroneously recorded her date of birth as 20.02.1986.

He states that the aforesaid exercise had to be undertaken by the

respondent/CBSE by retrieving the relevant records pertaining to the

petitioner from her school and they have been enclosed with the counter

affidavit, which bear out the fact that the petitioner had herself filled up

her date of birth in various documents submitted by her during her school

days that shows that she had herself indicated her date of birth as

20.02.1986. In support of his submission that the petitioner‟s request for

change of date of birth cannot be acceded to, in view of the provisions of

the aforesaid Byelaw, reliance is placed on a recent decision of a Division

Bench of this Court in the case of Bhagwat Dayal vs. CBSE & Ors.

reported as 180 (2011) DLT 1 (DB).

7. This Court has heard the counsels for the parties and has

carefully examined the documents placed on record by both sides.

8. The facts of the case have already been noticed above.

Bye-law 69.2 of the CBSE Examination Bye-laws deals with

change/correction in date of birth and the same is reproduced

hereinbelow:-

"69.2 Change/correction in Date of Birth-

(i) No change in the date of birth once recorded in the Board's records shall be made. However, corrections to correct typographical and other errors to make certificate consistent with the school records can be made provided that corrections in the school records should not have been made after the submission of application form for admission to Examination to the Board.

(ii) Such correction in Date of Birth of a candidate in case of genuine clerical errors will be made under orders of the Chairman where it is established to the satisfaction of the Chairman that the wrong entry

was made erroneously in the list of candidates/application form of the candidate for the examination.

(iii) Request for correction in Date of Birth shall be forwarded by the Head of the School along with attested Photostat copies of:

(a) Application for admission to the candidate to the School;

(b) Portion of the page of admission and withdrawal register where entry of date of birth has been made along with attested copy of Certificate issued by the Municipal Authority, if available, as proof of Date of Birth submitted at the time of seeking admissions; and

(c) The school leaving Certificate of the previous school submitted at the time of admission.

(iv) The application for correction in date of birth duly forwarded by the Head of school along with documents mentioned in Bye-laws 69.2(iii) shall be entertained by the Board only within two years of the date of declaration of result of class X Examination. No correction whatsoever shall be made on application submitted after the said period of two years."

9. In the present case, the documents placed on record by the

petitioner show that the discharge slip dated 15.10.1988 was issued by

the Military Hospital, M.H. Danapur Cantt., and reflects the name of the

father of the petitioner, as Shri S.N. Singh, Unit 56 APO. The said slip has

three columns, namely, (i) date of admission/discharge, (ii) International

Code No. and (iii) Diagnosis. Under the column, "date of

admission/discharge, two dates are shown, one is 12.10.1988 and the

other is 15.10.1988. In the column, "International Code No.", „V-30‟ is

endorsed and in the column, "Diagnosis", „single born‟ is mentioned. The

other relevant document filed by the petitioner is the Gazette notification

dated 10.12.2009, got published by her, whereunder it is notified that

her date of birth is 12.10.1988 and not 20.02.1986. The petitioner has

also placed on record a copy of her progress report for the academic year

1996-97 issued by the Kendriya Vidyalaya No.1, Sangrur Road, Patiala

Cantt, where she was studying in class III-B against admission No.7926.

On the said document, the date of birth of the petitioner is endorsed as

20.02.1986. Apart from the aforesaid documents, the petitioner has not

filed any other document pertaining to her date of birth.

10. As regards the respondent/CBSE, it has filed on record a copy

of the petitioner‟s application for admission in Kendriya Vidyalaya,

Ballygunge. The said application is dated 03.11.2000. Column number

two of the said application relates to the date of birth. Under the said

column, there are two sub columns, one of which requires the applicant to

fill up the date of birth in figures and the other one requires the applicant

to fill up the date of birth in words. In both the sub-columns, the date of

birth of the petitioner has been filled in as 20.02.1986. Similarly, a

perusal of the Transfer Certificate dated 27.10.2000 issued by the

Kendriya Vidyalaya, Danapur Cantt, the date of birth of the petitioner is

reflected in column No.6 as 20.02.1986, both in figures as also in words.

Lastly, the respondent/CBSE has placed on record an extract of the

Register forwarded by the school, where the petitioner was studying in

class X, namely, Kendriya Vidyalaya, Ballyganje, Kolkata, whereunder her

name features at Sr.No.5 and against the column of her date of birth, the

same has been reflected as 20.02.1986, both in figures and in words.

11. When all the aforesaid documents are taken into consideration

collectively, it clearly falsifies the contention of the counsel for the

petitioner that in view of the petitioner‟s father being employed in the

Indian Army and consequently, having had to move from station to

station with his family, due to a bonafide error, her date of birth was

wrongly recorded in the school where she took admission, as 20.02.1986

instead of 12.10.1988. It is pertinent to note that Bye-law 69.2 stipulates

that an application for correction of date of birth should be forwarded by

the head of the school alongwith the documents mentioned therein and

the same would be considered by CBSE only within a period of two years

from the date of declaration of the result of class X examination. It

further clarifies that no correction whatsoever would be made on an

application submitted after expiry of the aforesaid period of two years.

12. In the present case, admittedly the petitioner had approached

the respondent/CBSE after a period five years if reckoned from the date

of passing her class X examination. Further, the falsity of the stand of the

petitioner, that she had discovered the fact that her date of birth had

been incorrectly reflected by the respondent/CBSE in its records only

during the course of her making preparations for appearing in the

competitive examinations while studying in the five years law course, is

clear from the document placed at page 28 of the paper book, which is a

copy of the petitioner‟s progress report issued by the school, where she

was studying when in class III-B. The said document reveals that the

date of birth of the petitioner had been mentioned as 20.02.1986. The

aforesaid position has remained consistent even thereafter, which fact is

borne out from a perusal of the copy of the application for admission

submitted by/on behalf of the petitioner to the Kendriya Vidyalaya,

Ballygunge on 03.11.2000,wherein her date of birth had again been

mentioned as 20.02.1986, both, in words and in figures. Similarly, the

Transfer Certificate issued to the petitioner by Kendriya Vidyalaya,

Danapur Cantt. on 27.10.2000 also reflected her date of birth as

20.02.1986. Lastly, the extract of the Register maintained by the school

as forwarded to the CBSE reflects the same position. In the above facts

and circumstances, the petitioner cannot be permitted to approach the

Court by laying a challenge to the date of her birth as recorded by the

respondent/CBSE in her Class X Certificate, i.e., 20.02.1986 and further,

by calling upon it to change the same to 12.10.1988, as claimed by her.

13. Reliance placed by the learned counsel for the petitioner on

the decision in the case of Kumari Para (supra) is misconceived inasmuch

as Bye-laws 69.1 and 69.2 were not a subject matter of examination in

the aforesaid case. Furthermore, the Single Judge had particularly

recorded in para 15 of the aforesaid judgment that the petitioner therein

had submitted a representation within a period of two years from the date

of declaration of her result of class X examination. In the case of

Narinder Kaur (supra), the factual matrix is again entirely different. The

said case is one relating to a service matter, where the appellant therein

was selected in the Haryana Civil Services (Judicial) and she joined duties

on 20.05.2000. Realizing that her date of birth was recorded wrongly in

the birth certificate, she submitted an application dated 12.04.2002,

within a period of two years from the date of her entry into Government

service, requesting that her date of birth be changed from 26.01.1971 to

09.01.1972. The said request was turned down by the Punjab & Haryana

High Court on the administrative side. Aggrieved by the said rejection

order, the appellant therein preferred a writ petition before the High

Court, which was also dismissed. Finally the appeal by the appellant filed

before the Supreme Court was allowed by the Supreme Court and it was

observed that the High Court had not undertaken any inquiry regarding

the change of the date of birth of the appellant and further, the State of

Punjab had submitted an affidavit confirming her correct date of birth,

which fact could not be disputed or controverted in view of the

presumptive value of such a record.

14. In the present case, no such inquiry is required to be

undertaken by this Court at the behest of the petitioner. In the first

place, it was for the petitioner to have placed on record relevant

documents to establish her stand that right through her school days, the

schools where she had taken admission from time to time, had recorded

her date of birth as 12.10.1988 and further that she had approached the

head of the school where she was studying and from where she had taken

her Class X examinations, to point out the error, if any, while recording

her date of birth. Pertinently, the petitioner had taken her Class XII

examinations from the same school and has passed out in the year 2006,

but even at that time, she had neither noticed the above discrepancy, nor

did she take any steps to approach the respondent/CBSE with such a

request. Rather, the petitioner made such a request only in the year

2009. On the contrary, the respondent/CBSE had to make efforts to trace

the records pertaining to the petitioner from the different schools, where

she had studied from time to time and all of them when perused, bear out

the fact that the date of birth of the petitioner was recorded therein as

20.02.1986 and not as 12.10.1988 as claimed by her.

15. For all the reasons stated hereinabove, this Court does not

find any merit in the present petition, which is dismissed while leaving the

parties to bear their own costs.

                                                        (HIMA KOHLI)
JANUARY    25, 2012                                        JUDGE
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