Dirctor General Of Posts & Ors vs K.Chandrashekar Rao

3. Thus, it is not necessary for us to notice the facts of each appeal separately. Though, the judgments are of different dates, they are primarily based upon the judgment of the High Court dated 23rdJuly, 2008. For the purpose of convenience, we would be referring to the facts of SLP(C) No.19871/2009.

4. The Department of Personnel and Training (for short ‘DoPT’), Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pension, Government of India, issued a memorandum dated 9th October, 1998 containing the scheme for compassionate appointment with an object to give a source of employment to the dependent family members of the government servant dying in harness or one who has retired on medical grounds. This scheme was declared on 9th October, 1998. The scheme stipulated that the compassionate appointment could be made upto a maximum of 5 per cent of the vacancies falling under Direct Recruitment Quota in Group ‘C’ or ‘D’ post.

6. The father of the respondent was employed with the appellants in a Group ‘D’ post. Unfortunately, the father of the respondent died on 19th April, 2000.

9. It is the case of the appellants now that the mistake of appointment in excess of the prescribed quota was detected and vide letter dated 12th March, 2003 it was communicated that it was not possible to adjust the candidates who were recommended in excess of the quota because the recommendation for compassionate appointment was to be made on the basis of five per cent of the approved vacancies cleared by the Screening Committee. In furtherance to this, a decision was taken on 17th May, 2004 to select only the most indigent persons against the available vacancies within the prescribed ceiling of 5 per cent of the vacancies finally cleared by the Screening Committee. In furtherance to the decision taken by the competent authority, a meeting of the Special Circle Relaxation Committee was convened and appointment of total 21 candidates on the basis of five per cent approved vacancies cleared by the Screening Committee was approved. The remaining 48 candidates were terminated/not permitted to continue/dropped on 12th October, 2004. On 12th January, 2005, the appellants noticed that the candidates, whose names had been cleared for compassionate appointment on 13-15th March, 2002 or in the year 2002 were still temporary servants. 48 names were in excess of the quota, therefore, a notice of termination under Rule 5 of the Central Civil Services (Temporary Services) Rules, 1965 was issued and as already noticed, the services of the 48 persons, whose names were recommended in excess of the quota, were terminated. These appointees, including the respondent in the present appeal, challenged the said order of termination before the Central Administrative Tribunal (for short ‘CAT’). The CAT granted an interim stay during the pendency of the hearing of the application vide its order dated 8th February, 2005. The present appellants also point out that two other applications, being OA No. 434/2005 and OA No. 761/2005 filed by similarly situated employees, came to be dismissed vide orders of the CAT dated 20th October, 2005 and 19th April, 2007 respectively.

10. The application filed by the present respondent came up before the CAT for hearing on 31st October, 2007. While allowing the application of the respondent, the CAT held that the appointment of the respondent- applicant before it, was not liable to be terminated inter alia, but primarily for the following reasons:-

11. Being aggrieved from the judgment of the Tribunal, the appellant filed a writ petition, being W.P.(C) No. 20655/2008 before the High Court. The High Court by that time had already disposed of Writ Petition (C) No. 15820 of 2008 filed by the Government Department entitled Superintendent of Post Offices, Anantpur Division, Anantpur vs. R.S. Madan Lal vide its judgment dated 23rd July, 2008, the subject matter in SLP(C) No. 19872/2009 which is also listed along with the present bunch of matters. While the High Court upheld the order of the CAT, it not only accepted its reasoning but in addition thereto held as under:-

The writ petition fails and the same is accordingly dismissed, at the admission stage. No costs.”

29. In view of the above settled position of law and the fact that the memorandums could not be given retrospective effect, we do not consider it appropriate to interfere with the judgment of the High Court. The spirit of the Scheme was to provide relief to the family members of the deceased persons and thus on the yardstick of social justice, such relief cannot be withdrawn on the ground of some alleged discrepancy which has not been supported by any data, is unreasonable and therefore, even unsustainable. The appellants must state appropriate reasons and provide the expected data on record if they expect the Court to come to a different conclusion. As already noticed, the appellants have miserably failed to place any such data on the basis of the Memorandum dated 14th June, 2006.

30. For the reasons afore-stated, we dismiss all these appeals and further issue the following directions;

A) The appointments of the respondents will not be interfered with by the appellants on the strength of the memorandum dated 4th July, 2002.

B) The Office Memorandum dated 16th May, 2001, 14th June, 2006 and 4th July, 2002 have in relation to the 1998 Scheme for Compassionate Appointment caused some confusion on the one hand and while on the other they have prejudicially affected the rights of large number of heirs of the employees who died in harness. Thus, we direct the appellants to issue comprehensive, certain and unambiguous directions which shall put an end to such unnecessary controversies.

31. However, there shall be no orders as to costs.