New Delhi, May 26: A passport or job applicant need not reveal that he faced criminal charges as a child, draft juvenile justice rules the government released yesterday have stressed.

Child rights activists said this would clarify a grey area in the existing law that often led to sackings and contradictory court rulings.

The relief, however, will not be available to people who have, as minors, been convicted under adult laws, as is now possible for "heinous" crimes by children aged 16 or above.

Applicants for jobs, passports, tenancies or child adoption are often asked whether they ever faced any criminal charges. Even the existing juvenile justice law says the applicants need not mention charges of juvenile delinquency, even if convicted, and that such history does not bar them from the job or benefit sought.

It adds that a delinquent's records - whether with the police, Juvenile Justice Board or child welfare committees - must be destroyed seven years after the completion of the case.

It further says that no one should reveal a person's past juvenile delinquency - but does not explicitly state that even the police cannot do so during verifications or when asked by prospective employers.

This, activists say, has led to police disclosures and, sometimes, court endorsements of the sackings that follow.

Now, the draft Juvenile Justice Rules, 2016, for the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act, 2015, have explicitly forbidden the police from revealing "any record of the child for the purpose of character certificate or otherwise... where the case has been closed or disposed of".

The police must now "destroy the record of a child permanently" once the last appeal has been disposed of, without waiting seven years, or once the child has been released from a detention home.

Activists cite two cases to illustrate the lack of clarity that has vitiated the matter so far.

A job applicant, charged with a crime in 1996 when he was 14 and acquitted in 2003, had written "No" in the column seeking details of any criminal cases against him. He was sacked after a police enquiry.

When he moved Delhi High court, it ruled in 2006 that the "wrong he had committed" by furnishing "incorrect information" did not "stand corrected by his acquittal".

But in a similar case, Punjab and Haryana High Court ruled in 2010 that a sacked petitioner, charged with an offence in 1994 when he was eight, was protected under the Juvenile Justice Act.