The Allahabad High Court while dismissing the petition held that compassionate appointment cannot be granted after a lapse of 26 years from the death of the employee.
A Single Bench of Justice J.J. Munir passed this order while hearing a petition filed by Avnish Tandon.
The petitioner has come up, challenging the order dated 08.01.2023 passed by the Assistant General Manager and the Regional Head, Bank of Baroda, Bareilly rejecting the petitioner’s application seeking compassionate appointment in his mother’s stead.
The petitioner’s mother was a Cashier-cum-Clerk in the erstwhile Bareilly Corporation Bank, which subsequently merged with the Bank of Baroda in 1999.
Counsel for the petitioner emphasizes that the Bareilly Corporation Bank (BCB), before the merger too, was maintained by the Bank of Baroda (BOB). The petitioner’s mother died in harness on 12.11.1996, leaving behind the petitioner, then a minor, besides a minor daughter.
The petitioner passed his B.Com examination in the year 2007 and made an application for compassionate appointment. The petitioner has brought to the Court’s notice the fact that he has been pursuing his claim with the BOB, post merger, for compassionate appointment unsuccessfully since the year 2007. In the year 2022, finally, he moved this Court, seeking a direction for consideration of his claim.
The direction to consider the petitioner’s case was issued because the Bank seems to have invited some application from the petitioner on 23.03.2022 regarding his claim for compassionate appointment.
Nevertheless, the Court was mindful of the fact that the claim was highly belated, a fact that is reflected in the order of the Court made on 31.05.2023. The Bank was left free to take a decision in the matter, strictly in accordance with law.
The Court noted that,
It is in the context of the aforesaid direction that the impugned order has been passed by the Bank, declining the petitioner’s case on two counts. The first is that the petitioner’s mother was an employee of the BCB, which was a separate entity, and she died before its merger with the BOB in the year 1999. The other was that the claim was one made nearly 26 years after the event.
The Court is not minded to look into the validity of the reason carried in the impugned order that the petitioner’s mother died before the merger. The Court is also not impressed by what the Bank has said about the 26 years delay on the petitioner’s part in approaching the Bank.
“It does appear that the petitioner approached the Bank soon after he passed his B.Com examination. The fact on which the fate of the case would turn is that the petitioner waited too long in commencing any kind of action to enforce his rights, if these were there. He pursued the matter with the Bank from the year 2007 right up to the year 2022, when for the first time, he instituted a writ petition before the Court. Prior to the year 2022, the petitioner did not bring any kind of action before any judicial forum to enforce his rights.
Apart from this feature of the matter, what is most important is that 26 years have indeed elapsed since the petitioner’s mother passed away. During this long passage of time, as life goes on, it is a legitimate inference to draw that the financial crisis emanating from the petitioner’s mother’s untimely demise would have been tided over by the petitioner, in whatever way it was. There is, therefore, no existing exigency to bail out the family in economic distress now, in aid of which the Court may issue a mandamus to consider the petitioner’s case.
In this view of the matter, the Court does not find any good ground to interfere”, the Court observed while dismissing the petition.