CUTTACK: The Orissa High Court on Monday quashed a single judge’s order directing state government to give compassionate appointment under the Rehabilitation Assistance Scheme, 17 years after the employee’s death.
The division bench of Chief Justice Chakradhari Sharan Singh and Justice Savitri Ratho ruled that the direction for considering the daughter’s case for appointment on compassionate basis, more than 17 years after the death of her father, defeats the very purpose of the scheme of appointment on compassionate ground.
According to the case records, Parameshwar Majhi died while in service as stenographer-cum-typist at the executive engineer Subarnarekha Irrigation Division on September 28, 2006. Majhi’s daughter Geetamani Soren (29), who was a minor then, applied for compassionate appointment on July 6, 2013 after attaining age of 18.
On the basis of a medical certificate obtained seven years after the death of her father, she claimed that her mother was unfit to claim appointment on compassionate basis as she was suffering from certain diseases. On January 18, 2017, the authorities rejected her application mainly on the ground that when the spouse of the deceased government employee was available, the claim of the daughter could not be entertained.
Subsequently, when the single judge invalidated the order of the authorities on October 31, 2023 and directed them to process Geetamani’s application for providing her compassionate appointment, the state government challenged it by way of a writ appeal.
The division bench of the Chief Justice said in the present case, the daughter filed an application for appointment on compassionate basis seven years after the death of her father with a plea that the widow was unfit for doing any job.
“The daughter has not been able to establish a case that on the date of death of her father, her mother was unfit for doing any job, even if her subsequent medical certificate, for the first time issued in 2013, was to be believed,” the division bench observed, adding, “Physical incapacity of her mother was required to be determined as on the date of death of her father not on the date when the respondent filed the application for appointment on compassionate ground.”