P NAGAMUNI Vs. GOVERNMENT OF ANDHRA PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal by special leave against a judgment dated October 9, 1979 of the Andhra Pradesh Administrative Tribunal at Hyderabad.

(2.) The appellant joined service on April 7, 1943 in the Revenue Department in West Godavari District and thereafter he was transferred to the Commercial Tax Department in 1946. In the service register the date of his birth was shown as April 20, 1924. The case of the appellant is that in April, 1978, on the occasion of the marriage of his son, an old relative of his told him, when the question of his date of birth was broached, that he could not have been born in April 1924 because it was in that very year that his parents were married. On September 26, 1978 the appellant made a representation to the Secretary to the Government, Revenue Department, A. P. praying that his date of birth should be corrected as August 19, 1925. That representation was turned down on the ground that it was not filed within ninety days of February 10, 1976, as provided under the rules issued in G. O. Ms. No. 50, Finance and Planning (F. R. I.) Department, dated February 10, 1976. The appellant then filed a petition before the Andhra Pradesh Administrative Tribunal under paragraph 7 of the Andhra Pradesh Administrative Tribunal Order, 1975, praying that in the circumstances stated by him in his affidavit, the Tribunal be pleased to issue an order declaring that his true date of birth is August 19, 1925, and that the date of birth recorded in the service record as April 20, 1924 is incorrect. The Tribunal having rejected the representation, the appellant has filed this appeal by special leave.

(3.) It is not necessary to decide the question as to whether the representation filed by the appellant was barred on the ground that it was not filed within 90 days of February 10, 1976 as provided by the rules of the Finance and Planning Department to which we have earlier referred. But we would like to observe that the aforesaid rule will govern those cases only in which the cause of action for applying for rectification of the date of birth arose prior to February 10, 1976. It could not have been possibly intended by the rule making authority that the opportunity for rectification of the birth date should be available to those persons only who had discovered prior to February 10, 1976 that the birth date recorded in the service register was wrong.