Point of Law: Service Law - Die-in-harness Scheme - Compassionate appointment - Scheme requires authority concerned to educate family of deceased Government servant of his rights under scheme. Instead of perusing this litigation as adversarial, department had applied its mind to real issue; this entire litigation could have been avoided. Stand taken by department is totally insensitive.

JUDGMENT :

Akil Kureshi, J .

This appeal is filed by the State Government to challenge the judgment of the learned Single Judge, dated 3 rd September 2019, passed in WP(C) No.1085/2018. Respondent herein was the original petitioner. His father was working in Group-D post under the Director, Secondary Education, Government of Tripura. While in service, the petitioner’s father expired on 10th September 2012. The petitioner, first applied for the death certificate and after obtaining the death certificate, applied to the Government authorities for issuance of a survival certificate. Survival certificate was issued on 26th November, 2013 which showed that the deceased was survived by his 3 sons and 1 daughter, the petitioner being the eldest, aged around 18 years, his other siblings were aged 14, 12 and 7 years. The mother of these children had expired on 6th January, 2011.

[2] On 5th March 2014, the petitioner applied to the Government for appointment under Die-in-harness Scheme. In such application, the petitioner stated that “In our family, our father was the only source of income and he was the only employee and our mother died six years back. As a result, he was the only source of income in our family. (b) At present myself and my two minor brothers and one minor sister and their age is 13, 8 and 6 respectively and we have no guardian to maintain or to take care of our family. At present, we are passing our days with starvation. To continue education and study has become difficult and as such, to save and survive our family, I pray with folds hand for a govt. job under die-inharness scheme.”

[3] In this application, the petitioner also stated that to collect survival certificate and death certificate there was some delay and “due to my ignorance and absence of any proper guidance I could not submit the prayer within the stipulated period.”

[4] By an order dated 6th February 2018, the application of the petitioner for appointment on compassionate grounds was rejected on the ground that he had made the application after a lapse of 1 year 5 months and 25 days from the date of death of his father. As per the Die-in-harness Scheme, such application should be made within 1 year from the date of death of the Government servant.

[5] On 23rd March 2018, the petitioner made a detailed representation to the Director of Secondary Education in which he pointed out that in order to make the application for appointment on compassionate grounds he had to submit the death certificate of the deceased, survival certificate and ration card of the family etc. He pointed out that though the death certificate was issued on 6th June 2013, due to administrative process the survival certificate was issued only on 26th November, 2013 by the SubDivisional Magistrate(SDM), Khowai. Since this survival certificate itself was issued after 1 year from the date of death of the Government servant, the application for compassionate appointment could not be made earlier. He also referred to the Die-in-harness Scheme framed by the Government under notification dated 26th December 2015, in which it is provided that the members of the family of the deceased may not be aware of the provision of Die-in-harness Scheme and the formalities to be completed for making such an application and, therefore, as soon as the department receives the information about the death of an employee while in service, communication in writing should be made to the family members of the deceased so that application for employment under the scheme can be submitted within the stipulated period. The petitioner asserted that in his case no such guidance was provided by the department which was also one of the reasons why the application for appointment under the scheme could not be made sooner.

[6] This representation of the petitioner was rejected by the Director of Secondary Education by an order dated 24th April, 2018 in which in addition to reiterating that the application was made beyond the per