Jharkhand High Court: A Division Bench of Aparesh Kumar Singh and Kailash Prasad Deo, JJ. dismissed the writ petition being devoid of merits.
Brief facts of the case are that the father of the applicant died on 24.08.2009. After which his mother filed an application dated 13.04.2010 for grant of compassionate appointment in his favour as the deceased employee died leaving behind a widow, two sons and one married daughter. The name of the applicant was at serial number 30 out of 73 persons and 19 out of 59 candidates in 2012 and 2013 respectively.
Now by the impugned order dated 21.05.2015, the cases of applicants got rejected because they have been considered five and they could not find place in the list of deserving candidates, either in view of non-availability of vacancies or more deserving persons listed above. The Tribunal rejected the arguments of the applicants and held the applicant has received due consideration along with others and no case of discrimination holds ground.
The applicant being aggrieved by an order passed by Central Administrative Tribunal, seeking quashing of the order of rejection of compassionate appointment dated 21.05.2015 has preferred this writ petition.
The counsel for the petitioner, Ajay Kumar Pathak, submitted that the claim of compassionate appointment has been rejected on arbitrary grounds. Proper evaluation of the claim as per the defined yardstick has not been made. Learned Tribunal should have accorded sympathetic consideration since the father of the applicant had died on 24.08.2009 in harness.
The counsel for the respondent, Laxman Kumar, has opposed the prayer. He submitted that applicant’s claim was considered as per the uniform defined criteria on five occasions, one after the other on applications made for reconsideration. The previous orders of rejection were not challenged.
The Court observed that in the matter of compassionate appointment, vacancies are limited for a particular year out of the total post in the cadre i.e., 5%. Applicant’s claim was considered four times earlier and each time he did not find place amongst the candidates falling within the vacancies for that year against the quota of compassionate appointment. Applicant has not been able to show that he had a better claim then the other candidates above in the list. Moreover, the earlier orders of rejection were also not challenged and had become stale.
In view of the above, the Court decided not to interfere in the impugned order passed by the learned CAT and dismissed the writ petition. [Mukesh Kumar Das v. Union of India, 2020 SCC OnLine Jhar 231, decided on 02-03-2020 ]