SC upholds govt decision on Army Chief's age

In a setback to Army Chief Gen V K Singh, the Supreme Court today upheld the government decision on his age issue and said he cannot resile on his commitment accepting the date of birth as May 10, 1950, forcing him to withdraw his petition.

The apex court said it was not in favour of entertaining Gen Singh's petition that his date of birth should be treated in official records as May 10,1951 and gave him option of withdrawing it.

The court held that no prejudice was done to Gen Singh and the government decision on his date of birth will continue to be there. In view of this, Gen Singh will have to retire on May 31 this year.

The apex court noted that the government has full faith in him and that the court wanted to ensure that he continues to work as the Army Chief as he has been doing.

Gen Singh has to abide by his commitment and honour his letters of 2008 and 2009 accepting the date of birth as May 10, 1950, the court said during over two-hour long hearing in a packed court room.

Finally, Gen Singh withdrew his petition when the court hearing resumed at 2 pm after the lunch recess.

Earlier, at the start of the hearing, Attorney General G E Vahanvati informed the court that government has withdrawn its December 30,2011 order rejecting Gen Singh's statutory complaint on his age issue.

At the same time, Vahanvati made it clear that the government stands by its decision of July last year to treat his date of birth as May 10,1950.

Posing tough questions to Gen Singh as to why he did not get the records corrected, a bench headed by Justice R M Lodha said the recognition of his date of birth as May 10, 1950 by the Army does not suffer from perversity and was not grossly erroneous.

It said that all documents at threshold when Gen Singh joined Indian Military Academy and National Defence Academy contain the date of birth as May 10,1950.