Compassionate job plea for kin 26 yrs after rly staffer’s death rejected

MUMBAI: 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.

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 on duty in 1991. Though the railways had sought to know if she wanted a job soon after his death, she had not responded to the offer then. It was only when her daughter turned 26 years old, did she seek the benefit. Hence, the division bench of chief justice Dipankar Datta and justice Girish Kulkarni 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.

Advocate TJ Pandian for the railways 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 the man expired and hence she could not take up the job was true, she should have approached the railways on attaining the age of 18 years.

HC accepted the contentions and rejected the appeal.