Court No. - 34
Case :- WRIT - A No. - 29743 of 2017 Petitioner :- Rubi Rani Respondent :- State Of U.P. And 3 Ors.
Counsel for Petitioner :- Bajrang Bahadur Singh,Satya Prakash Singh,Shravan Kumar Pandey,Shyam Narain Pandey Counsel for Respondent :- C.S.C.
Hon'ble Yashwant Varma,J.
Heard learned counsel for the parties.
The father of the petitioner died while in service on 26 July 2015. The petitioner at that time was married. That marriage came to be annulled by a decree of divorce granted in 2017. It is thereafter that the petitioner applied for grant of compassionate appointment. The brothers of the petitioner have also submitted their affidavits of no objection before the respondents.
The claim of the petitioner for grant of compassionate appointment has come to be rejected by the respondents taking a decision that since the petitioner was a divorced daughter she was not entitled to be considered for the grant of compassionate appointment.
This Court firstly notes that the Uttar Pradesh Recruitment of Dependents of Government Servants (Dying-in-Harness) Rules, 1974 as originally framed, qualified the rights of daughters to seek compassionate appointment by providing that they should be unmarried. The validity of Rule 2 insofar as it used the expression "unmarried daughter" fell for consideration before the Court in Smt. Vimla Srivastava Vs. State of U.P. And Another [2016 (1) ADJ 21]. The Court held that the word "unmarried" as used in Rule 2 was constitutionally invalid and struck it down. The judgment in Vimla Srivastava was rendered on 4 December 2015. Evidently therefore on the date when the impugned order came to be passed, the word "unmarried" did not exist on the statute book. Though not necessary, it may additionally be observed that once the petitioner came to be divorced, she was an unmarried daughter. In view of the aforesaid, the Court finds itself unable to sustain the order impugned.
Accordingly, the writ petition is allowed. The impugned order dated 18 May 2017 is quashed. The matter stands remitted to respondent No.3 for deciding the claim of the petitioner afresh.
It becomes important to clarify that the Court has quashed the impugned order having found that the reason assigned would not merit acceptance. However [and as was clarified in Vimla Srivastava], it would still be incumbent upon a daughter to establish a situation of dependency on the deceased government servant in order to sustain a prayer for appointment on compassionate grounds. Hence, the aforesaid and all other aspects relevant for deciding a claim for compassionate appointment shall be open to be considered by the respondents independently and uninfluenced by this decision.
Order Date :- 29.7.2021 Rakesh