Education | The Indian Express
The Delhi High Court has underscored the “presumption of correctness” of official birth certificates and told the CBSE to rectify the record of a student. A bench of Justices Subramonium Prasad and Harish V Shankar underlined the “imminent need” to ensure all official documents were in consonance with each other, as it not only provided certainty on specific details in public documents but also helped preserve the identity of a citizen with the date of birth being an essential facet.
“A citizen of this country is entitled to a true and correct narration of all necessary and relevant particulars in the public documents that pertain to them. The CBSE is a record keeper of considerable importance,” the court said.
The bench’s observation came while dismissing the appeal of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) against a single judge’s direction to correct the date of birth of a student in the certificates issued in 1999.
It said, “It is evident that public documents, such as an official birth certificate issued by the competent authority, carry a statutory presumption of correctness under the law.” In the case at hand, the bench noted no cogent reason for the CBSE to disregard the document.
“Accordingly, the board is expected to take due notice of such statutory public documents and effect consequential corrections in the records of the appellant,” it added.
The bench opined that a citizen was entitled to a true and correct narration of all necessary and relevant particulars in their public documents and the matriculation certificate was considered an “unassailable proof of date of birth”.
The respondent had sought correction in the CBSE certificates on the basis of the birth certificate issued by the Greater Chennai Corporation.
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The court, in its verdict on June 4, said there was no challenge to the genuineness of the birth certificate and if the CBSE record was at variance with the respondent’s passport in which the date of birth had already been corrected, it could lead to a considerable doubt in the minds of any person who considered her for employment, immigration or other purposes.
The CBSE argued that the request for the rectification was made beyond the prescribed time period under the examination bye-laws and after a over 10 years, no record was maintained by it.
The single judge said the incorrect date of birth as entered in the CBSE records did not appear to be a clerical or typographical error but was the result of a genuine mistake. The court held there was no infirmity in the decision of the single judge and rejected the CBSE’s appeal.
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