HC confirms ruling on jobs for married women

Entitled to employment on compassionate ground

A Division Bench in the Madras High Court Bench here has confirmed an order passed by a single judge last year maintaining that daughters of governments servants who die in harness, are also entitled to public employment on compassionate grounds irrespective of their marital status, if they and their husbands file affidavits with an undertaking to take care of the immediate family of the deceased.

Dismissing a State appeal preferred against the single judge’s order, Justices R. Subbiah and J. Nisha Banu said: “Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance. Discriminating between men and women will be against the Constitutional principles and therefore such discrimination cannot be sustained.”

Authoring the judgment for the Bench, Ms. Justice Banu also said: “We are in an era wherein women have risen above challenges and dutifully discharged their responsibilities as an individual in different roles. ‘She’ remains one of the supreme species wherein her representatives are clocked 24/7 in different forms as a daughter, wife, mother, sister, friend, aunt, grandmother, daughter-in-law, mother-in-law, guardian, employee and so on and so forth. “Women are not just procreators of a clan but have become a reliant person who can take care of their own family as well as their new-found family. ‘She’ has risen from being a dependant to a nurturer of a relationship and for a woman to take care of her own parents is a welcome trend in society.”