Allahabad High Court has ruled that people have a fundamental right to change their names, which the examination rules of the Central Board of Secondary Education cannot override.

The high court has allowed a plea from a former CBSE student that challenged the board’s rejection of his application to have his first name changed on his Class XII certificates.

The single-judge bench of Justice Pankaj Bhatia cited several Supreme Court and high court rulings and said the right to change one’s name was part of the freedom of speech and expression guaranteed by Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.

It said such rights were subject to reasonable restrictions but not by an organisation like the CBSE that was a registered society and not a statutory authority.

“The rules as framed by the CBSE do not have any statutory flavour and cannot be considered to be the ‘law’ as required for placing reasonable restrictions on the rights enshrined under Article 19(1)(a), in terms of Article 19(2) of the Constitution of India,” the December 2 judgment said.

Ravi Bhardwaj, a senior lawyer with long experience in fighting education-related cases, said the judgment had questioned the sanctity of the rules framed by the board. He feared that students, teachers and schools might now begin questioning the CBSE’s rules on examinations and school affiliation.

“The government should now consider enacting a law to give the CBSE a statutory character. This has been long due. Considering the extensive presence of CBSE schools in India, it’s time this requirement was given due importance,” Bhardwaj said.

The petitioner, known as Rishu Jaiswal when he cleared his Class XII boards in 2015, had later changed his name to Kabir Jaiswal. When he sought to have the name change reflected on his certificates, the CBSE refused. The court has allowed the change.

According to the CBSE’s exam by-laws, a candidate’s name or those of her parents can be changed on board documents — following a court directive and a gazette notification — only before the candidate’s results have been published.

If the results have been published, only corrections in the spellings of the names of the candidate and her parents are allowed, that too within five years of the publication of the results. Also, the candidate must get her school to forward the application along with the admission records.

“I agree with the judgments of Kerala High Court as well as Delhi High Court to hold that change of name is an expression guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India,” the December 2 judgment said.

Bhardwaj said the right to change one’s name was not directly mentioned in the Constitution, but had been interpreted by the courts to lie within the ambit of one or the other fundamental right.