Can’t deny compassionate job to younger son if elder brother is ineligible: HC

Can’t deny compassionate job to younger son if elder brother is ineligible: HC

Siddharth Pandey & Ashutosh Shukla tnn 

Jabalpur/Bhopal: Denying a job to a person on compassionate grounds just because his elder sibling was found ineligible for it is illogical, a division bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court ruled, upholding a single bench order asking MP Discom to consider the application for compassionate appointment by the younger son of an assistant lineman who died during his service tenure in 2016. 

The single bench had directed MP Discom to grant the application in line with the policy for compassionate employment as it existed then. The company moved the division bench challenging single bench order on the plea. At a hearing on its petition on Aug 20, the division bench directed MP Discom not to reject the plea of the younger son of the departed employee, as it had done in his elder brother’s case. The company had turned down the latter’s application for employment on compassionate grounds, saying he wasn’t qualified enough to be considered for a Class IV job. The bench of acting Chief Justice Vivek Rusia and Justice Pradeep Mittal said, 

“The earlier rejection of the application submitted by the respondent’s elder brother, by itself, cannot be a ground to reject the respondent’s claim, particularly when the respondent is seeking consideration as another eligible dependent of the same deceased employee and the family seeks only one compassionate appointment.”