CBSE board told to allow change of dad's name in marksheet

Mumbai: The Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court has held that the CBSE board cannot refuse the request of a student for changing the name of his/her parent in the board's records.

The petitioner, a student of Class 10 of a CBSE school, had approached the court after the board refused to change her father’s name in the records on grounds that the name change option was only for correction of spelling mistakes and that the request came after the stipulated time-limit.

However, the court held that the rules did not make any distinction for changing name of parent hence the CBSE's board's refusal was not valid.

A division bench of justices B.P. Dharmadhikari and A.D. Upadhye was hearing a writ petition filed by a student through her father seeking directions to the CBSE to change the name of the father which the board had refused to do so.

The counsel for the student argued that after the name of the father was changed, it was informed to the school and a copy of the gazette was also submitted along with the name change request.

The school wrote to the board to effect the change but the board refused to do the needful. As a result of this, the marksheet of the class 10 exam of the student had the unchanged name of the father, hence the girl had to approach the court.

However the counsel for the board argued that the amended bye-laws only addressed the issue of change of name due to factual error or typographical error with the stipulated time. As the student had applied for change of name the bye-laws did not have any provision for the same and hence the application for change of fathers name was rejected.

After hearing the arguments and perusing the bye-laws, the bench held that the application was done within a year of the result being declared hence the board should allow the name change and issue the marksheet, migration certificate, etc to the student within two weeks.