Aadhaar card is not valid to prove age, school certificates are preferred: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Thursday quashed an order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which had accepted the Aadhaar card for determining the age of a road traffic victim, seeking compensation.

A bench comprising Justices Sanjay Karol and Ujjal Bhuyan, therefore, said that the age of the deceased should be determined on the basis of the date of birth mentioned in the final certificate under Section 94 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act , 2015. .

“We note that the Unique Identification Authority of India, through Circular Number 8 of 2023, has stated, referring to an office memorandum issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology dated December 20, 2018, that an Aadhaar card, Although it can be used to establish identity, it is not necessarily proof of date of birth,” the bank said.

When it came to determining age, the top court accepted the contention of the plaintiff-appellants and upheld the judgment of the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal (MACT), which calculated the age of the deceased on the basis of his school leaving certificate.

The Supreme Court was hearing an appeal filed by the family of a man who died in a road accident in 2015.

MACT awarded Rohtak damages of Rs 19.35 lakh, which was reduced to Rs 9.22 lakh by the high court after observing that MACT had wrongly applied the age multiplier while determining compensation.

The Supreme Court had relied on the Aadhaar card of the deceased to calculate his age as 47 years.

The family alleged that the High Court erred in determining the age of the deceased from the Aadhaar card as his age, calculated as per his school leave certificate, was 45 years at the time of death.