COMPASSIONATE APPOINTMENTS

1. Context 

2. About Compassionate appointments

• The Concept of compassionate appointments can be traced to the Indian Constitution's Article 39, which is under the Directive Principles of State Policy and talks about the right to livelihood.
• It aims to employ on compassionate grounds the dependent family members of a government servant who dies in harness or retires on medical grounds, leaving the family without any source of sustenance.
• Multiple factors are looked at while assessing a request for compassionate appointments, such as the family's financial condition, the presence of earning members, family size, children's ages and the family's essential needs.

3. Eligibility for applying compassionate appointments

• However, the government servant must have been appointed " regularly" and not on a daily wage, casual, apprentice, ad-hoc, contract or reemployment basis.
• Moreover, the deceased's dependents can only be first-degree relations such as their spouse, son or daughter ( including adopted ones), brother or sister in the case of an unmarried Government servant or member of the Armed Forces, who was wholly dependent on the government servant at the time of their death in harness or retirement on medical grounds.
• To be eligible for this, the deceased's family must be "indigent" or needy and deserving of immediate assistance for relief from financial destitution".
• The applicant should also be eligible and suitable for the post in all respects under the provisions of the relevant Recruitment Rules.

4. Empowering this appointment

• Compassionate appointments are made by either the Joint Secretary in charge of administration in the Ministry or Department concerned or the "Head of the Department under Supplementary Rule 2 (10) in the case of attached and subordinate offices".
• They can also be made by the Secretary of a Ministry or Department in special cases.

5. Court judgments

• The apex court set aside the judgment delivered by a Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court on September 30, 2019, restoring an earlier order passed by a single judge of the Calcutta High Court on July 5, 2018.
• While the Division Bench had directed consideration of the applications for the compassionate appointments in light of circulars issued by the state government, the single-judge had rejected the applications due to delay and absence of state policy.
• In its decision, the apex court cited its rulings from 2008 and 2014 in the cases of "Mumtaz Yunus Mulani vs, the State of Maharashtra and State Bank of India vs. Surya Narain Tripathi" respectively, to say that "the existence of a policy issued by the State Government is a sine qua non for making appointments on the compassionate basis".
• Observing the absence of a policy governing compassionate appointments the Court refused to grant the posts under local authorities in West Bengal.
• Moreover, the Court said that even if the policy existed, it would be of no use to consider the applications several years after they were filed.
• The Court also referred to a slew of its rulings from 1989 and 1994 in "Sushma Gosain vs. Union of India' and "Umesh Kumar Nagpal vs. the State of Haryana" respectively, to say that there shouldn't be any delay in compassionate appointments and the same should be "provided immediately to redeem the family in distress", provided that the government or public authority examines the financial condition of the deceased's family and is satisfied that "but for the provision of employment, the family will not be able to meet the crisis".

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