The Supreme Court on Thursday set aside an order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which had accepted Aadhaar card to ascertain the age of a road accident victim to grant compensation.

A bench comprising Justices Sanjay Karol and Ujjal Bhuyan therefore said that the age of the deceased has to be determined from the date of birth mentioned in the school leaving certificate under section 94 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act ) from 2015. .

“We note that the Unique Identification Authority of India, vide circular number 8 of 2023, has stated, with reference to an office memorandum issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology dated December 20, 2018, that an Aadhaar card, while it may be used to establish identity, is not in itself proof of date of birth,” the commission noted.

In determining the age, the trial court accepted the contention of the plaintiffs-appellants before it and upheld the judgment of the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal (MACT) which calculated the age of the deceased on the basis of the 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.

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

The high court relied on the Aadhaar card of the deceased to calculate his age at 47 years.

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