‘Citizens Entitled To Correct Records’: Delhi HC Orders CBSE To Fix Student Record

Last Updated:June 11, 2025, 13:41 IST

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.

The Delhi High Court underscored that official birth certificates carry a “presumption of correctness” and ordered the CBSE to correct a student’s records.

A bench of Justices Subramonium Prasad and Harish V Shankar stressed the need for all official documents to match, as this helps maintain clarity in public records and protects a citizen’s identity. The court said that the date of birth is an important part of a person’s identity, as reported by the news agency PTI.

“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 remarks came while the court was hearing an appeal filed by CBSE against an earlier order directing it to correct a student’s date of birth in certificates issued back in 1999.

The court said that documents like a birth certificate issued by a competent authority are legally presumed to be correct. In this case, the judges found no valid reason for CBSE to ignore the birth certificate.

“Accordingly, the board is expected to take due notice of such statutory public documents and effect consequential corrections in the records of the appellant,” the court said.

The court also said that every citizen is entitled to have correct information in their public documents. It pointed out that the matriculation certificate is often treated as solid proof of date of birth.

In this case, the student had requested CBSE to change the date of birth in its records based on a birth certificate issued by the Greater Chennai Corporation.

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In its June 4 order, the court noted that there was no dispute over the genuineness of the birth certificate. It said if CBSE’s records were different from what was mentioned in the student’s passport, which had already been corrected, it could lead to confusion when applying for jobs, visas, or other purposes.

CBSE had argued that the correction request came too late, long after the deadline set by its examination rules, and that no records were available after such a long period.

The single judge had earlier ruled that the wrong date of birth in CBSE records was not due to a simple typing error but was likely a genuine mistake.

The High Court agreed with the single judge and dismissed CBSE’s appeal.

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