Nagpur Bench of Bombay High Court Clarifies Employment Can Be Offered to Next Eligible Family Member

 Lokmat News Network (Nagpur)

In a significant judgement the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court has ruled that if the descendent mentioned in the waiting list for compassionate employment does not get a job by the age of 45 years, the next eligible descendent may be employed in his place.

While delivering the judgement a full bench consisting of Justice Anil Kilor, Justice Anil Pansare and Justice Mahendra Chandwani clarified that such swapping of descendents does not affect the compassionate employment policy of the state government.

As per the state government policy, if a state government employee dies in harness or becomes incapacitated for medical reasons, one of his heirs is given compassionate employment after fulfilling the eligibility conditions.
The policy, introduced with the noble objective of saving families of such employees from financial crisis, provides support for livelihood and saves them from future hardship. The state government introduced the policy in September 2017. However, there were two controversial provisions incorporated in the welfare policy scheme.

There was a provision that if a descendent included in the waiting list for compassionate employment does not get a job up to the age of 45 years, his name will be removed from the list. Secondly, the place of the candidate in the waiting list could only be replaced by the next eligible candidate after the first candidate's demise.

About 11 petitions were filed challenging controversial provisions of policy before the High Court. While hearing the bunch of petitions, Justice Avinash Gharote and Justice Mukulika Khabikar clarified that  if a descendant in the waiting list for compassionate employment does not get a job by the age of 45 years, another eligible descendant from the same family could be included in his place.

The division bench requested the Chief Justice of Bombay High Court to refer the issue to a larger bench to determine whether this stance was in accordance with the Compassionate Employment Policy.

The larger bench after considering the question, ruled that if the descendent could not get compassionate employment within stipulated age limit, then another eligible family member could replace him for the appointment. The Full Bench after considering various factors upheld the stand taken by the division bench. The court also clarified that maintaining the waiting list of eligible candidates for compassionate employment is not contrary to the provisions of the policy.

Adv Shrirang Bhandarkar, Adv Akshay Sudame, Ibrahim Fidvi, Rajnish Vyas argued before the full bench to assist the court, assistant government pleader M K Pathan represented the state government.