Telangana HC Judge Will Retire Soon as Top Court Declines to Change His Date of Birth

To get two more years in the chair by fixing his date of birth, a high court judge has knocked on the doors of the Supreme Court. But to no avail.

Less than a week before retirement, the Telangana High Court judge failed to persuade the Supreme Court to determine and record his "correct" date of birth.

Justice B Siva Sankara Rao had prayed for an appeal to the President to re-determine his correct date of birth, which would have extended his tenure by another two years.

But his last ditch attempt could not yield the desired result and Justice Rao will now have his last day in office on April 10.

According to Rao, his correct date of birth is March 29, 1959 but the recorded date of birth is April 10, 1957. The Telangana HC website also records this anomaly.

His petition in the Supreme Court pointed out that Article 217(3) of the Constitution gives the President the power to determine the age of judges of high courts if any question arises on this aspect.

Appearing for the judge, senior lawyer PS Narasimha argued that Justice Rao's original date of birth is March 29, 1959, but his SSC record wrongly shows it as April 10, 1957.

According to the lawyer, Justice Rao had made several representations to the High Court to make the correction at the time of his entry into the judiciary in 1996, but his requests were rejected.

After his elevation to the HC, the court allowed him to make a representation to the President in this regard.

Narasimha added that Justice Rao wrote to both the President and the Law Ministry. However, he got no response from them, compelling him to approach the HC yet again for directions to correct his date before March 31, 2019.

During the hearing, the bench headed by Justice SA Bobde deemed it proper to seek assistance of the Attorney General KK Venugopal.

Venugopal was called upon in the court to respond whether such a plea should be entertained at the fag end of the career of a judge of a constitutional court.

When the AG came, he began by submitting that Justice Rao's requests in the past had been considered and dismissed at the time of his entry into the judiciary 23 years ago.

Days before retirement, Venugopal said, such a plea cannot be allowed to reagitated and reargued.

The bench found merit in the law officer's contentions and said that it would not entertain the petition.

"We see no reason to entertain this petition. Accordingly, the writ petition is, accordingly, dismissed," stated the court order.