Dr Lalit Varma, a senior Uttar Pradesh Cadre IAS officer, is in a spot for allegedly misrepresenting his date of birth in order to stay in service longer. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjiv Jain at the Tis Hazari Court here has taken cognisance of the offence and summoned the officer on November 19.

The trouble started for the 1984-batch IAS officer in August 2003 when officials at the Department of Personnel and Training noticed a change in his date of birth on the Civil Services application form. A formal complaint was lodged by Under Secretary Valsala Hariharan.

DoPT officials alleged that beneath the column where his date of birth was entered as March 1, 1959, there had been an addition, “contested under correction”. February 13, 1962 had been added as his “corrected” date of birth.

The CBI, which began inquiring into the senior officer’s actual date of birth, came across a representation made by Varma to the Government of UP in 1987. Dr Varma had claimed that his actual date of birth was February 13, 1962, which he found out on checking the municipal records recently.

The CBI told the court that it had found Varma, who was 24 years old when he joined the IAS, was trying to adopt the date of birth of his younger brother Sudhir. Varma’s motive was to postpone his retirement by 35 months, the CBI claimed. The agency found that the date of birth was March 1, 1959, in his hospital, school and university records.

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