India's Supreme Court upholds govt decision on Army Chief's age

New Delhi, Feb 10 (PTI) In a setback to Army Chief Gen V K Singh, the Supreme Court today upheld the Indian 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 an 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at the start of the hearing in the morning, Attorney General G E Vahanvati informed the court that government has withdrawn its December 30, 2011 order rejecting Gen Singh's statutory complaint on his age issue. But Vahanvati made it clear that the government stood 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 have the date of birth as May 10,1950. The Supreme Court bench, also comprising Justice H L Gokhale, said Gen Singh has to abide by his commitment and honour his letters of 2008 and 2009 in which he had accepted his date of birth as May 10, 1950. The court told Gen Singh that having given his commitment and assurance of abiding by the government decision, he cannot now resile. After Gen Singh withdrew his petition, the court declared it as disposed off as withdrawn. Emerging from the court, the Army Chief's counsel Puneet Bali said it was a victory for both the sides as the matter has been resolved amicably. "Our petition was not for extension of service (of Gen Singh) but a matter of honour and integrity of the General," he told reporters, adding "we are satisfied that his honour and integrity has been restored". With May 10, 1950 to be his date of birth, Gen Singh will retire at the end of May 2012,on attaining the retirement age of 62 years. A service chief in India has a tenure of either three years or till he attains the age of 62 years. If May 10, 1951 had been accepted by the Supreme Court as his date of birth he would have continued in service till March 31, 1913, when he would have completed three years in office as army chief. PTI