Summary
The Court held that the 2012 amendment extending compassionate-appointment eligibility to an unmarried brother of a deceased unmarried female government servant did not cover a death in 2010. Consideration of the application after the amendment did not confer the enlarged benefit. Compassionate appointment is an exception to ordinary recruitment and creates no automatic vested right. The State’s appeal was allowed, the Tribunal and High Court orders were set aside, and the respondent’s application was dismissed.
Issues
- Whether the later amendment enlarging the eligible class applied because the compassionate-appointment application was considered after its introduction.
Provisions considered
- Articles 14 and 16, Constitution of IndiaCompassionate appointment was treated as an exception to the constitutional requirement of regular recruitment, subject to scrutiny rather than an automatic entitlement. (¶¶ 7, 17-18)
Held
- The rules applicable when the employee died did not include her unmarried brother. The later enlargement of the eligible class did not become retrospective merely because the application was considered after the amendment. (¶¶ 8, 20)
- An earlier decision concerning project-displaced persons involved an amendment prompted by a finding that exclusions were unconstitutional. That setting differed from this compassionate-appointment amendment. Insertion of additional words did not automatically attract the interpretive rules applicable to substitution. (¶¶ 9-10, 20)
- Reviewing the apparently divergent precedents, the Court considered their different scheme provisions and whether benefits were enlarged or diluted. It found no need to await the pending larger-Bench reference to decide this appeal. Compassionate appointment remained subject to dependency, financial circumstances and other requirements, rather than a vested right. (¶ 11-18)
- The Court favoured a fixed criterion such as the employee’s death over variable application or consideration dates for determining applicability. It also recognised that some modified schemes expressly required pending applications to be decided under their new terms. Here the later amendment could not supply eligibility absent when the employee died. (¶ 19-20)
Result
State’s appeal allowed without costs; Tribunal and High Court orders set aside and application for compassionate appointment dismissed.