Saurabh Malik
Chandigarh, August 14
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed the reissuance of a passport with corrected date of birth to an applicant after making it clear that a passport officer, having the jurisdiction to issue a passport, also had the authority to correct the same. The respondent-authority had claimed in the case that the applicant had applied for correction of date after 18 years. As such, the delay disentitled him to any relief.
The ruling by Justice Sudhir Mittal of the High Court came on a petition filed against the state of Punjab and another respondent. The Bench, during the course of hearing, was told that the passport was originally issued to the petitioner on September 4, 2000. His date of birth was recorded as March 16, 1958.
The passport was reissued in September 2010 with the same date of birth. But the petitioner on July 4, 2018, applied for a change in the date of birth on the basis of his birth certificate. He moved the High Court for the relief after the same was not done by the authority concerned.
Appearing before Justice Mittal’s Bench, the petitioner’s counsel submitted that the birth certificate took primacy over all other documents evidencing a person’s date of birth. As such, the passport authorities were not justified in refusing to correct the date. He also relied upon a Division Bench judgment in the matter in the case of “Resham Singh versus the Union of India and another”.
Taking up the matter, Justice Mittal asserted a perusal of Resham Singh’s judgment showed that instructions dated April 18, 2001, issued by the Ministry of External Affairs directing a passport officer to refuse correction of the date of birth, when there were contradictory documents, was held to be illegal.
It has been held that a passport officer had the jurisdiction to issue a passport. In view of Section 21 of General Clauses Act, he would also have the authority to correct the same.
It was also held that the statutory powers available to an official could not be whittled down by instructions and a birth certificate took primacy over any other document so far as the date of birth evidence was concerned.
“In view of the law laid down in Resham Singh case, the writ petition is allowed. The respondent-authority is directed to reissue a corrected passport to the petitioner,” Justice Mittal concluded.