Calcutta HC: Compassionate appointment claim made nine years after the father's retirement fails; delay defeats equity
The question: Can the Railway Board's 1974 circular on loyal staff support a claim for compassionate appointment, and from what date is the claim reckoned?
The Calcutta High Court has dismissed a writ petition seeking compassionate appointment in the Railways on the ground that the petitioner's father had been a loyal employee, holding that a gap of about nine years between the father's retirement and the first application disentitles the petitioner, and that the petitioner's long delay in coming to court defeats equity. A Division Bench of Chief Justice Ravindra V. Ghuge and Justice Om Narayan Rai, in a judgment written by Justice Rai, upheld the order of the Central Administrative Tribunal, Kolkata Bench, which had found the claim hopelessly belated. The petitioner's father joined a Class IV post in the Eastern Railway, Howrah Division, in 1944 and retired on 1 March 1977. He had been given an advance increment as loyal staff for working during the 1974 strike. The petitioner's mother applied for his appointment on compassionate grounds in 1986, and he applied himself in the same year, relying on a Railway Board circular of 13 February 1974 that extended the system of compassionate appointment to loyal staff. His first original application, filed in 1989, was dismissed for default in 1990, and he sought its restoration only in 2013. The railway authorities rejected his representation in October 2015, and the Tribunal dismissed his second application on 19 July 2022. He came to the High Court four years later.