Can’t exclude married daughters from compassionate jobs, says High Court

Kolkata: Excluding married daughters from compassionate appointment is discriminatory as the test must be financial dependency and not marital status, the Calcutta High Court has ruled.

Justice Ananya Bandyopadhyay delivered the judgment while allowing a writ petition filed by Sukla Das, whose father, an employee of the Kolkata Metropolitan Water and Sanitation Authority (KMW&SA), died in harness in May 2013. Following his death, the petitioner applied for employment on compassionate grounds. She filed affidavits, undertook to support her widowed mother, obtained no-objection certificates from her siblings and appeared before the screening committee for an interview in June 2015. Her claim was, however, rejected by an order dated July 12, 2016. The authority relied on a government notification issued in December 2013, which restricted compassionate appointments to spouses, sons and unmarried daughters.

Married daughters were specifically excluded under Rule 3(d). The court pointed out that this restriction had already been examined and struck down by a larger bench of the Calcutta High Court in an earlier case, which held that excluding married daughters was unconstitutional and violated Article 14. Once that ruling was affirmed, authorities could not continue to deny claims on the same ground. The court also noted that KMW&SA had itself applied the 2013 scheme by processing the petitioner’s claim, calling her for an interview, and seeking documents. Having acted under the notification, it could not later deny her rights by contending that it lacked an independent scheme.

“The respondent-authority cannot approbate and reprobate at the same time. It cannot accept a part of the notification and then abstain from granting its ultimate effect,” Justice Bandyopadhyay observed.

On the issue of marital status, the court held that dependency was the only valid test. “The petitioner being married on the date of the death of her father cannot be a ground for rejection. The object of compassionate appointment is to alleviate financial hardship of dependents, which cannot be defeated by marital status,” the court said. Accordingly, the rejection order of July 12, 2016, was set aside. The court directed KMW&SA to reconsider the petitioner’s application in accordance with the government notification as read down by the court. The writ petition was allowed without costs.