@JUDGMENTTAG-ORDER
A.S. Venkatachalamoorthy, J.@mdashThe first respondent herein approached the Tamilnadu Administrative Tribunal by filing an application in O.A. No. 2209 of 2000 u/s 19 of the Tamilnadu Administrative Tribunal Act, 1985 praying the Tribunal to issue proper direction to the petitioners herein to allow him to continue in service till he attains superannuation in accordance with his correct date of birth i.e., 20.4.1944, pending for determination before the competent Civil Court for granting declaration of his correct date of birth. In the said application, the first respondent contended as follows:-
He joined the Tamilnadu Government service on 23.7.1969 as a Field Surveyor and that his service record was prepared simply relying upon the S.S.L.C. book. While his correct date of birth is 20.4.1944, it has been wrongly shown as 1.4.1942. The certificate of Birth of Registration u/s 17 of the Births and Deaths Act, 1969 issued by the Vellore Municipality on 25.4.1977 would clearly show this. One Manickam, paternal uncle of the first respondent brought him up and in fact, he had wrongly given the date of birth as 1.4.1942 at the time of admitting him into the school. The first respondent and his parents were not aware of the fact of the date of birth was wrongly entered in the school records. Only for the first time the first respondent came to know about this in the year 1997 when he was taking steps to arrange his daughter''s marriage. Apart from this document, the first respondent also came into possession of a document written at the time of betrothal function for the marriage of his father and mother. The betrothal ceremony was conducted on 17.6.1942 and the marriage was conducted on 26.6.1942. The first respondent, as soon as he came to know of this, informed to the concerned authorities of his department and on the advice of his superiors, he approached the Civil Court to get. a decree for declaration that his date of birth was 20.4.1944. The said suit was filed against the Director of School Education, Chennai. The suit was dismissed on erroneous appreciation whereupon, he filed an appeal before the City Civil Court, Chennai. Instead of waiting for the final verdict of the Civil Court on the subject, the petitioners informed the first respondent by a communication dated 13.3.2000 that his date of superannuation will be 31.3.2000. That prompted the first respondent to approach the Civil Court seeking for declaratory relief.
2. The Tribunal took the view that the birth certificate issued by the Vellore Municipality and the document evidencing the betrothal ceremony on 17.6.1942 would clearly show that the first respondent was born only on 20.4.1944. On interpretation of the Rule 49 of the Tamilnadu State and Subordinate Services Rules (hereinafter referred to as ''Rules''), it took the view that an application for alteration of date of birth can be filed even beyond five years and that only application filed without the necessary document will be summarily rejected. Being aggrieved by the said order of the Tribunal, the Commissioner and Director of the Survey and Settlement, Chennai, and others have filed the above writ petition.
3. The question for consideration in this writ petition is, as to whether an application for alteration of date of birth can be filed beyond five years of the entry into service. For the purpose of this case, we are concerned with Rule 49, Sub clauses (b) and (c). We hereunder extract the same.
"49(b) After a person has entered service, an application to alter the date of his birth as entered in the official records shall be entertained only if such an application is made within five years of such entry into service. Such an application shall be made to the authority competent to make an appointment to the post held by the applicant at the time of his application and shall be disposed of in accordance with the procedure laid down in sub-rule (a).
(c) Any application received after five years after entry into service or any application, which is not supported by entries in S.S.L.C., School, College or University records, birth extract from records of local bodies or military discharge certificates, shall be summarily rejected."
4. It is settled law that an act has to be read as a whole and the different provisions have to be harmonised and the effect has to be given to all of them. ((2001) 1 SCC 284, East India Hotels Ltd and another v. Union of India and another). Similarly, the Court is required to interpret the statute as far as possible agreeable to the justice and reason and while interpreting the statute the Court has to keep in mind the underlying policy of the statute and object sought to be achieved by it.
5. Keeping the above in mind, let us proceed to examine as to what has been stipulated under the Rule 49(b) and 49(c). Before that, reference to some of the rulings would be of considerable use.
(a) In
"A Government servant, after entry into service, acquires the right to continue in service till the age of retirement, as fixed by the State in exercise of its powers regulating conditions of service, unless the services are dispensed with on other grounds contained in the relevant service rules after following the procedure prescribed therein. The date of birth entered in the service records of a civil servant is, thus of utmost importance for the reason that the right to continue in service stands decided by its entry in the service record. A Government servant who has declared his age at the initial stage of the employment is, of course, not precluded from making a request later on for correcting his age. It is open to a civil servant to claim correction of his date of birth, if he is in possession of irrefutable proof relating to his date of birth as different from the one earlier recorded and even if there is no period of limitation prescribed for seeking correction of date of birth, the Government servant must do so without any unreasonable delay. In the absence of any provision in the rules for correction of date of birth, the general principle of refusing relief on grounds of laches or stale claims, is generally applied by the courts and tribunals. It is nonetheless competent for the Government to fix a time-limit, in the service rules, after which no application for correction of date of birth of a Government servant can be entertained. A Government servant who makes an application for correction of date of birth beyond the time, so fixed, therefore, cannot claim, as a matter of right, the correction of his date of birth even if he has good evidence to establish that the recorded date of birth is clearly erroneous. The law of limitation may operate harshly but it has to be applied with all its rigour and the courts or tribunals cannot come to the aid of those who sleep over their rights and allow the period of limitation to expire...."
(Emphasis supplied)
(b) I
"The Tamil Nadu Service Manual contains Rules 49 and 49A, which are the provisions in respect of alteration and correction of the date of birth. Whenever any application is filed, by person governed by those service rules, procedures prescribed therein have to be strictly followed, including the time limit prescribed for making such an application. Clause (b) of the aforesaid Rule 49 provides that after a person has entered in service, an application to alter the date of his birth as entered in the official records "shall be entertained only if such an application is made within five years of such entry in service...". It need not be pointed out that if an application is made for correction of the date of birth mentioned in the service records at an early date or within the time prescribed, the authorities are in much better position to verify the same...."
(emphasis supplied)
(c) In
"4. Rule 49 and 49-A of the Rules provide the procedure and limitation for seeking correction of the date of birth by the government employees. Rule 49(b) provides that after a person has entered in service, an application to alter his date of birth, as entered in the official records, "shall be entertained only if such an application is made within five years after entering in service...".... The object of the rule or statutory instructions issued under proviso to Article 309 or orders issued by the Government under Article 162, for the correction of the date of birth entered in the service record, is that the Government employee, if he has any grievance in respect of any error of entry of date of birth, will have an opportunity, at the earliest, to have it corrected. Its object also is that correction of the date of birth beyond a reasonable time should not be encouraged. Permission to reopen accepted date of birth of an employee, especially on the eve or shortly before the superannuation of the government employee, would be an impetus to produce fabricated record....
6. As held by the Court in
(emphasis supplied)
(d) Recently, a Division Bench of this Court in a decision reported in 2002 (2) CTC 577=2002 Writ L.R. 489 (The Government of Tamil Nadu v. J Ramassamy and another) had occasion to consider the same question and has clearly ruled that as per the Rules 49(b) and (c), all applications received five years after entering into service ought to be summarily rejected and that Rule 49(c) does not deal with extending the period of limitation. The Court also pointed out that the application which is filed within the period of limitation should be supported by anyone of the documents mentioned in Sub Clause (c) and failure to furnish such documents in support of the application would result in the summary rejection of such application.
Rule 49(b) clearly lays down that an application to alter the date of birth as entered in the official records shall be entertained only if such application is made within five years of such entry in to service.
Rule 49(c) lays down that any application received after five years after entry into service or any application which is not supported by any one of the document set out therein shall be summarily rejected.
7. The learned counsel appearing for the petitioners would contend that the word ''or'' occurring in Rule 49(c) should be read as ''and'' and the words ''any application'' occurring immediately after the word ''or'' would refer only to the application mentioned in Rule 49(b). On the other hand, the learned counsel for the first respondent would contend that the words ''any application'' occurring after the word ''or'' would only refer to the application filed after five years. Or in other words, to understand the rule correctly, the words ''or any application'' have to be ignored.
8. First of all, it has to be remembered that Rule 49(b) and Rule 49(c) have to be read as a whole and the different provisions have to be harmonised {vide (2001) 1 SCC 284). If the contention of the learned counsel for the respondent is to be accepted, then the Rule making authority could have omitted the words ''or, any application'' and in which event, the wordings of the rule will be ''any application received after five years after entering into service which is not supported...''. This submission cannot be accepted for the following reasons, (a) in Rule 49(b) the word ''only'' finds a place, and (b) the courts cannot ignore or omit certain words found in the Act/Rule on the ground that they are inapposite surplusage or otiose or superfluous. The Court always presumes that the legislature inserted every part thereof for a purpose and the legislative intention is that every part of the Statute should have effect. The legislature is deemed not to waste its words or to say anything in vain {vide:
On consideration of entire matter, we are of the view that the word ''or'' occurring in Rule 49(c) has to be read as ''and''. Further, the word ''any application'' employed after the word ''or'' in Rule 49(c) would only refer to the application mentioned in Rule 49(b).
It is settled law that to have a harmonious construction of provisions of the Act, or to achieve the purpose and object of the Act, if the word ''or'' has to be read and understood as ''and'' then necessarily it has to be read and understood so and vice-versa (Refe
9. Hence, the legal position is to the following effect:-
(a) Any application for altering the date of birth shall be entertained only if filed within five years of entry into service And if such application is supported by document/ documents referred in Rule 49(c).
(b) Any application filed within five years and not supported by document/documents referred in Rule 49(c) so also any application filed after five years after entry into service shall be summarily rejected.
10. So far as the present case is concerned, as already pointed out, the first respondent joined the Tamil Nadu Government services on 23.07.1969 and he approached the Tribunal as late as in 2000, seeking for a relief so as to enable him to continue in service on the basis that he was born on 20.04.1944. Here, we have no hesitation to hold that the application filed by the first respondent is liable to be summarily rejected. In this view of the matter, the Writ Petition is allowed. In the result, the writ petition is allowed. No costs.
