Date of birth correction in office records

My friend is seeking for change in date of birth in office records , but is being denied the same . she joined service in 1983. at that time her birth certificate was misplaced and she had school leaving certificate which was having wrong birth date as 22/03/1959 instead of 22/03/1960 applied for correction in DoB by submitting birth certificate and affidavit in 1990. but the office did not pay heed, and just filed the application in the personal file. now she is to retire on 31/03/2017 as per the erroneous date of birth recorded in the records. roughly 45-50 days before in Feb 2017 she again applied for correction in date of birth but the board turned down the application, saying that she should have applied for the same at least one year before, and that if she had applied for it before why did she not keep track of it at that time , that she should have got it done at that time only. my question is can they deny it when the 1st application for correction was done way back in 1990, as soon as her birth certificate was traced.