Aadhar Card Not Valid Proof For Age Determination: Supreme Court
The Supreme Court on Thursday set aside a new order passed by the Punjab and Haryana High court which had accepted the Aadhar card for determining the age of a road accident victim to grant compensation.
A bench of Justices Sanjoy Karol and Ujjal Bhuyan said that the age of the deceased can only be determined from the date of birth mentioned in the school leaving certificate under Section 94 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.
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“We find that the Unique Identification Authority of India, by way of its circular number 8 of 2023, has stated, in reference to an office memorandum issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology dated December 20, 2018, that an Aadhaar Card, while can be used to establish identity, is not per se proof of date of birth,” noted the bench.
The apex court also approved the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal’s (MACT) decision to rely upon the School Leaving Certificate for age determination as there was a difference in date of birth on the two documents.
The order was given when it was hearing an appeal filed by kin of a man who died in a road accident in 2015. MACT, Rohtak was given a compensation of Rs 19.35 lakh which was then reduced to Rs 9.22 lakh by the high court after noting that MACT had wrongly applied the age multiplier while determining the compensation.
The high court had relied on the Aadhar card of the deceased to determine his age as 47 years. The family approached the Supreme Court saying that the high court had erred the deceased’s age based on an Aadhar card and it was found that when calculated as per his school certificate, the deceased was 45 years old at the time of his death.
Aadhar card has not been relied upon by many High Courts as proof of date of birth, the Supreme Court stated.
