Supreme Court Rules Aadhaar Not Proof of Age, Restores MACT Compensation

The Supreme Court has held that an Aadhaar card cannot by itself be treated as proof of a person's date of birth, setting aside a Punjab and Haryana High Court order that had relied on the document to fix the age of a road accident victim.

A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Ujjal Bhuyan ruled that age in such cases must be determined from the date of birth recorded in a school leaving certificate, as provided under Section 94 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.

The bench pointed to a circular issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India in 2023, which referred to an office memorandum of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology dated December 20, 2018. That circular states that while an Aadhaar card can be used to establish identity, it is not in itself proof of date of birth.

The case arose from an appeal by the relatives of a man who died in a road accident in 2015. The Motor Accident Claims Tribunal in Rohtak had awarded compensation of ₹19.35 lakh after calculating the deceased's age from his school leaving certificate. The High Court reduced the amount to ₹9.22 lakh, holding that the tribunal had applied the wrong age multiplier, and used the Aadhaar card to fix the age at 47.

The family argued that the High Court had erred, since the school leaving certificate put his age at 45 at the time of death. Accepting that contention, the top court upheld the tribunal's approach and restored its finding on age.