PRAYAGRAJ, April 15 -- The Allahabad high court has said that a mere discrepancy in the dates of birth in different educational records of a government servant, bereft of any element of fraud, misrepresentation, or deliberate concealment, won't be 'fraud or wilful misrepresentation' so as to terminate their services. Justice Manju Rani Chauhan thus quashed the June 2019 dismissal order passed against a government assistant teacher in Mau while directing the state authorities to permit him to resume his duties forthwith. "The inference of fraud, which entails grave civil consequences, cannot be drawn on the basis of equivocal circumstances or mere inconsistencies in record, howsoever inconvenient they may appear," the court said. Petitioner Vijai Kumar Yadav was appointed as an assistant teacher in a junior basic school of Mau in 2014. However, in 2018, an RTI application was filed seeking his educational credentials. Pursuant to that, it was revealed that an earlier 1998 high school record showed his date of birth as July 2, 1984, whereas his Purva Madhyama certificate of 2001 recorded it as July 7, 1987. Relying on this alleged discrepancy, the then basic shiksha adhikari of Mau dismissed him from service on June 27, 2019, and directed lodging of an FIR against him. Challenging the dismissal order, the petitioner filed the present petition, contending that the said high school certificate had neither been relied upon nor produced by the petitioner at any stage of recruitment process. It was submitted that the same was neither utilised for seeking admission to the BTC training course, 2010. Further, it was argued that since no benefit had been derived by the petitioner on the basis of the said certificate at any point in time, the dismissal order was wholly unjustified and legally unsustainable. The court observed that a non-disclosure, to assume the character of misconduct, must be "purposeful, calculated, and actuated by a discernible intent to deceive". The court in its April 13 order quashed the dismissal order and directed the authorities to permit the petitioner to join his duties forthwith....