Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 5: The High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh has set aside a Single Bench decision that had granted relief for compassionate appointment, holding that a claim filed 11 years after the employee’s death was clearly time-barred under the Jammu and Kashmir (Compassionate Appointment) Rules, 1994.
A Division Bench of Justice Sindhu Sharma and Justice Shahzad Azeem allowed LPASW No. 180/2017 in SWP No. 2430/2015, and dismissed the writ petition filed by the son and widow of the deceased employee.
The case arose from the death of Abdul Rehman Sheikh, a Warder in the Prisons Department, who died in harness on June 8, 1998. His son Irshad Ahmad Sheikh applied for compassionate appointment on February 26, 2009-after a lapse of about 11 years-and the Home Department rejected the case in August 2015, citing non-coverage under the second proviso to Rule 3 of the 1994 Rules.
The Division Bench noted that Rule 3 requires an eligible family member to acquire eligibility and apply within one year from the date of death of the Government employee, and that belated claims cannot be entertained beyond the prescribed period. The Court also observed that while the limitation period was later extended to five years through SRO 177 dated June 20, 2014, even that extension did not rescue a claim raised after 11 years.
The Bench further examined the plea that the widow had approached the department within time, but found that the pleadings themselves showed she could not provide duplicate documents when asked, and the State maintained that no record of such an application was traceable-thereby weakening the attempt to bypass limitation.
Reinforcing the principle that compassionate appointment is meant to provide immediate relief to a bereaved family and is not a vested right, the Court referred to the Supreme Court’s approach in a similar fact situation, where an 11-year gap was held fatal to the claim.
Accordingly, the appeal was allowed, the Single Bench judgment was set aside, and the writ petition stood dismissed.
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