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Bombay HC asks Maharashtra govt to consider widow’s plea seeking job on compassionate grounds – India Today

While directing the Maharashtra government to consider the application filed by a 42-year-old widow of a police constable who is seeking employment on compassionate grounds, the Bombay High Court said, “No administration can be permitted to take so heartless an approach towards its own employees and their families.”

The division bench of Justices GS Patel and Gauri Godse was hearing a petition filed by 42-year-old Firdous Mohammad Patel, who had first filed an application for employment before the government in 2009. Her husband, Mohammad Yunus Patel, a constable with Maharashtra police, had died in 2008.

However, that application was rejected on the grounds that Yunus had more than two children. Firdous was Yunus’s second wife, and the couple had two children. He had three children from his first marriage to Raisa. In 2008, Yunus and his first wife, Raisa, had died in a fire incident.

Raisa’s family and Firdous then reached an agreement in which Raisa’s children would be solely entitled to Patel’s terminal benefits such as provident funds and gratuities, while Firdous would be eligible to apply for government service on compassionate grounds. As a result, Firdaus applied for the job after the settlement, but either she did not receive a response or she was rejected. This is when she mentioned another instance in which the government showed compassion by hiring a woman in a similar situation.

Firdous then approached the Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal (MAT), but it, too, rejected her plea in 2020. Firdous then challenged the MAT order before the Bombay High Court.

The high court, while quashing the MAT order, directed the Maharashtra government to consider Firdous for compassionate employment by September 19. While doing so, the bench said that the government order prohibiting more than two children of government employees “must be reasonably read. It is intended to apply to a median situation where the employee and his spouse constitute a small family with no more than two children.”

“If one sees it like this, then Yunus and Firdous were indeed a small family. They had only two children. The rule does not contemplate a situation where the employee separately contracts a marriage with another person and has children by that other marriage. We do not see how Firdous could possibly be held responsible for Yunus’s relationship with Raisa, his first wife, or his three children from that marriage with Raisa. Firdous was no part of that marriage,” the court said.

“It is impossible to contemplate a situation where Firdous would earn a disqualification for something for which she was not, and could not be, responsible. The consequences of Yunus’s marriage to Raisa, or, more accurately, any disqualification in that regard, could not justly or justifiably be visited on Firdous,” the court noted.

The court added, “The MAT fell into error when it said that the family included children born from both wives and that Raisa’s children could not be excluded. What was overlooked is the correct interpretation that one must see the number of children Firdous had from the marriage with the deceased employee.”

Continuing further, the bench said, “The question that the MAT should have asked itself is, of course, what the law mandates. But it ought also to have been mindful of the next two questions– what justice requires and what is the right thing to do.”

“All that Firdous has been seeking for the last 14 years is an opportunity to seek employment. Every single time, the door has been shut in her face without good or sufficient reason. For the last 14 years, since she was 28, Firdous has been seeking consideration of her application for compassionate employment. Hopefully, her quest for justice ends today,” the order said.

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Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/law/high-courts/story/bombay-hc-maharashtra-consider-widow-plea-seeking-job-compassionate-grounds-1986989-2022-08-12