Compassionate job for married daughter’s son? SC to rule

NEW DELHI: Days after ruling that a dependent married daughter is eligible for compassionate employment when her father dies in harness, Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to examine whether a married daughter’s son would be similarly eligible for compassionate or rehabilitation employment.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and V Mohana sought a response from the Chhattisgarh govt as petitioner Ankit Pandey challenged the state’s decision to decline him govt employment even after his grandparents, whose family members became eligible for employment under the compassionate rehabilitation scheme floated for project-affected persons, gave an affidavit in his favour.

Under the scheme, the project-affected family would include the landowner’s wife or husband, children, project-affected persons’ dependent parents, widowed mother or sister and unmarried daughter. It does not include a married daughter or her children.

The married daughter part was taken care of by the Supreme Court in a recent judgment, the only caveat being she should be dependent on the parents and had ordered the allocation of a fair price shop to a married daughter after the death of her mother, who was earlier allotted the shop.

Petitioner’s counsel Abhinav Shrivastava told the bench that Chhattisgarh govt had given appointment to one Suryadeep Tiwari, son of the daughter of another projected affected person. He said his client was identically placed and argued that the state has a policy where they include the daughter’s son to be part of the family. It asked Chhattisgarh govt to file its response in four weeks.