Chhattisgarh High Court Rules Marriage Won't Deny Daughters Compassionate Jobs

The Chhattisgarh High Court has directed a bank to grant compassionate appointments to two married daughters of deceased employees, ruling that marital status cannot be used to disqualify daughters from such employment when the underlying scheme makes no such distinction between married sons and daughters. A division bench comprising Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Ravindra Kumar Agrawal held in its order dated July 30 that rejecting the daughters' claims solely on the basis of their marital status was arbitrary, discriminatory, and legally unsustainable.

The court allowed two separate appeals filed by Sheena David, 33, of Bilaspur, and Ankita Mishra, 32, of Raipur, both of whom had challenged an earlier single-bench order that had gone against them. Their fathers had died while employed with the Chhattisgarh Rajya Gramin Bank, and their subsequent claims for compassionate appointment—a benefit typically extended to dependent family members of employees who die while in service—had been rejected by the bank solely on the grounds that the daughters were married.

In its ruling, the bench emphasized a core principle of consistency in the application of the bank's compassionate appointment scheme, noting that if marriage does not disqualify a son from being considered a dependent family member eligible for such appointment, the same standard must logically extend to daughters. The court observed that the bank's scheme defines a dependent family member to include both a "wholly dependent son" and a "wholly dependent daughter," without further classifying daughters based on their marital status. "Thus, the scheme itself makes dependency, and not marital status, the determinative criterion," the High Court observed, underscoring that the language of the scheme itself did not support the bank's discriminatory application of the policy.

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The bench went further, holding that denying compassionate appointments to married daughters, while extending the same benefit to married sons under the identical scheme, amounted to a violation of Articles 14 and 15 of the Indian Constitution, which guarantee the right to equality and prohibit discrimination on grounds including sex. The court found this differential treatment to be both arbitrary and constitutionally impermissible, reinforcing the principle that gender cannot serve as the basis for unequal application of an otherwise gender-neutral welfare scheme.

As part of its ruling, the High Court set aside the May 7 order issued by the single bench, along with the consequential orders that had rejected the claims of both women. The bench directed the Chhattisgarh Rajya Gramin Bank to issue formal orders of compassionate appointment in favor of both David and Mishra, assigning them to suitable posts commensurate with their respective educational qualifications. The court further mandated that these appointments be completed within 90 days from the date of receipt of its order, ensuring a definitive timeline for compliance and providing the two women with a clear path toward the employment benefit they had sought following their fathers' deaths.

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