Bombay HC rejects compassionate appointment plea 26 yrs after death of rly staffer

HC stated that appointment on compassionate grounds scheme was to ensure that the family of the deceased government employee did not suffer poverty and was bound by a period of limitation

The Bombay high court (HC), while dismissing the appeal of a woman against an order of the administrative tribunal – which had rejected her 2017 plea for compassionate appointment of her 27-year-old daughter in place of her husband – held that it would be a “mockery of the scheme” if an order contrary of the tribunals order was passed.

As the mother and daughter had survived all these years and the daughter also got married, she was no more in need of the job, HC rejected the appeal. (HT FILE)

HC stated that appointment on compassionate grounds scheme was to ensure that the family of the deceased government employee did not suffer poverty and was bound by a period of limitation and hence, the tribunal was right in rejecting the application of the woman who sought appointment under the scheme 26 years after her husband had passed away.

The woman’s husband, a railway employee, had died while on duty in 1991. Though the railways had sought to know if she wanted a job after her husband’s death soon after his demise, she had not responded to the offer then. It was only when her daughter turned 26 years old, did she seek the benefit. Hence, HC deemed that as the woman and her daughter had managed to survive all these years without needing a job with the railways, it would be a mockery of the scheme if her appeal was allowed and the daughter was appointed on compassionate grounds after the passage of 26 years.

A division bench of chief justice Dipankar Datta and justice Girish Kulkarni, while hearing the appeal filed by Alka Govind Kumbhar, was informed by her lawyer that in December 2016, the woman had come to know about the appointment on compassionate ground scheme after her brother-in-law applied to the railways for the same. In February 2017, she had applied for the appointment under the scheme for her daughter.

The advocate submitted that though his client had submitted all the documents sought by the railway officer concerned, in May 2018, she came to know that the application for appointing her daughter on compassionate grounds was rejected. However, the letter rejecting the application, dated March 2018, had not been conveyed to Kumbhar. Hence, she approached the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) in 2019 against the railways’ decision. After hearing all the sides, CAT had dismissed her plea in August 2019. Hence, she had appealed against CAT’s order in HC.

Advocate TJ Pandian for the railways, however, opposed the appeal and submitted an affidavit which stated that there was no merit in the appeal and it should be rejected. Pandian submitted that the railways had closed the issue of appointment on compassionate grounds for the deceased, Govind Kumbhar, in 1992 after his wife had failed to respond to a letter issued by them.

Pandian further submitted that even if the argument that the daughter was only 11 months old when Govind expired and hence she could not take up the job, she should have approached the railways on attaining the age of 18 years and not when she turned 27 years old. Pandian urged the court to reject the appeal, stating that the scheme was intended to help the family of the employee whose sudden death would have plunged the members in financial difficulties. But as the mother and daughter had survived all these years and the daughter also got married, she was no more in need of the job, HC rejected the appeal.