Married Daughter Cannot Be Denied Compassionate Appointment Merely Because of Her Marriage: Rajasthan High Court

The petitioner is the married daughter of a deceased government employee (paras 1, 3). The post was first offered to the deceased's son, her brother (para 3). He did not join the post and, by an affidavit dated 09.11.2021, said he had no objection if the appointment was given to his sister (para 5). She applied on 08.11.2021 (para 3). Orders dated 24.01.2022 and 08.02.2024 rejected her claim (para 1). The authorities' stand was that under a State notification of 28.10.2021, a married daughter gets compassionate appointment only when no other dependent of the deceased employee is available, and the son was available (para 3). Her writ petition relied on the Priyanka Shrimali and Meenakshi Trivedi judgments (para 2).

The short question was whether rejecting the claim on the strength of the notification or circular of 28.10.2021 could be sustained against the Full Bench judgment in Priyanka Shrimali v. State of Rajasthan (13.09.2022) (para 6). It agreed with the petitioner's reliance on a later Single Bench decision, Meenakshi Trivedi v. State of Rajasthan (25.01.2024), which relied on Priyanka Shrimali and concerned a similarly placed married daughter whose claim had been rejected under the same circular (paras 5-6). As reproduced by the Court, Meenakshi Trivedi had held that the 28.10.2021 amendment of the definition of ‘dependent’ in Rule 2(c) of the Rules of 1996 was prospective, and that the old definition, under which the Larger Bench in Priyanka Shrimali included a married daughter, carried no condition that no other dependent be available (para 7). The Court concluded that a married daughter cannot be denied the claim on the ground of her marriage as long as she is otherwise entitled to the benefit (para 8). Here the brother had given a no-objection in her favour, and the Court saw no reason why one of the surviving dependents should not receive compassionate appointment under the State's applicable policy (para 9).