Statutory documents take precedence over previous passport entries for correcting date of birth in passport re-issuance applications.

The petitioner, proprietor of M/s Kailash Enterprises, sought a writ of mandamus for the correction of her date of birth in her passport from an incorrect entry to the accurate date of 02-02-1963.

The petitioner’s original passport was issued manually on 10-01-2002, at which time the error occurred unnoticed; the error persisted through a re-issuance in 2011.

Upon applying for renewal after the passport's expiry on 30-11-2021, the authorities failed to rectify the anomaly despite the petitioner providing statutory documents—including Aadhaar, PAN card, Voter ID, LIC policies, and GST registration—all consistently reflecting the correct date.

1. Whether the passport authorities are bound to correct a petitioner’s date of birth based on statutory documents recognized by the Ministry of External Affairs’ notifications.

2. Whether procedural technicalities can override substantive rights when authentic evidence for a correction of record is provided.

Gazette Notification dated 24.02.2025 issued by the Ministry of External Affairs, specifically Sub-clause (b)(ii) of Clause 2, which identifies documents such as PAN Cards, Voter IDs, and LIC policies as valid proof for establishing a date of birth.

The court applied the equitable principle that procedural technicalities should not defeat substantive rights.

The Court observed that the petitioner presented multiple statutory and government-recognized documents, the authenticity of which was not in doubt, consistently showing her birth date as 02-02-1963.

The Court reasoned that the discrepancy was a relic of the "manual regime" of passport issuance and that the Ministry of External Affairs' own 2025 notification expressly permits the use of the documents provided by the petitioner to rectify such errors.

The Court determined that denying the correction based solely on previous incorrect entries would be unjust and contrary to the spirit of the governing notification, emphasizing that the law must prioritize substantive accuracy over historical clerical errors.

It held that the petitioner fulfilled the legal requirements for a date-of-birth correction.

The Court directed Respondents No. 2 and 3 to process the petitioner’s online application (Annexure P/8) by considering the cited statutory documents and to re-issue the passport reflecting the correct date of birth (02-02-1963) at the earliest in accordance with the law.