The Supreme Court overturns a Punjab and Haryana High Court decision, ruling that an Aadhar card is not Valid proof of age for accident compensation claims and emphasizing the use of school leaving certificate for accurate age determination, following guidelines by the Unique Identification Authority of India.
“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 Aadhar Card, while can be used to established identify, is not per se proof of date of birth,” noted the bench.
When it came to determining the age, the top court accepted the contention of the claimant-appellants before it and upheld the judgment of the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal which calculated the deceased’s age on the basis of his school leaving certificate. The top Court was hearing an appeal filed by kin of man who died in a road accident in 2015.
MACT, Rohtak awarded a compensation of Rs 19.35 lakhs which was reduced to Rs 9.22 lakh by the high court after noting the MACT Had wrongly applied the age multiplier while determining the compensation. The high Court had relied on the deceased’s Aadhar card to calculate his age as 47 years.
The family contended the high court erred in determining the deceased’s age on the basis of the Aadhar Card as his age, if calculated as per his school leave certificate, was 45years at the time of death.