Compassionate Appointment Is for Immediate Succour, Not After a 9-Year Wait to Report Father Missing: Rajasthan High Court

The petitioner's father, a Class-IV employee working as a Ward Boy in the medical and health department, left home for duty on 03.03.2005 and never returned (para 2). After a July 2014 newspaper notice under Rule 86 of the Rajasthan Service Rules, 1951, the petitioner asked that his father be treated as dead, but was told that without a death certificate Rule 86(4) proceedings would follow (para 3). On 26.08.2014 the absence was treated as resignation and the father discharged (para 4). A missing person report was lodged on 21.09.2014 (para 2), and a declaration of death was granted in appeal on 10.03.2017 (para 5). The petitioner then sought compassionate appointment (first para 6).

Justice Arun Monga noted that, on the petitioner's own case, his father left home on 03.03.2005, yet nothing was reported to the police until 21.09.2014. That inordinate nine-year gap did not explain the delay or justify a presumption of death (para 7). The civil suit, which ought to have been filed in 2012, was filed only in 2015, and nothing on record showed why the family waited nine years to inform the police (para 8). The petitioner acted only after the department told him that death could not be presumed without a death certificate or a court declaration; the missing person report was then filed only to seek compassionate appointment, and it became the basis of the suit that ended in the declaration (para 9). The long inaction and acquiescence appeared to be a ruse to get over the lapses and secure the State's benevolence (first para 10). Further, compassionate employment exists to give immediate succour to the family of a sole bread earner on his sudden death. Approaching the department almost nine years later reflected that the family had, or could manage, alternative means of survival (second para 10).