Jaipur: Rajasthan High Court has dismissed an appeal filed by a widow of a govt employee from Bharatpur, who sought a compassionate appointment for her younger son. The court held that the claim failed under the service rules and suffered from procedural lapses. A division bench of Justices Mahendar Kumar Goyal and Bhuwan Goyal passed the order Tuesday.Pushpa Devi’s husband, Purshottam Singh, died in service on May 21, 2015. Their son Jay Singh applied for compassionate appointment, but the govt rejected the application on Sept 16, 2015. The woman challenged the rejection before the high court in Aug 2016. A single bench dismissed her petition in Feb 2025.The court found that the couple’s elder son, Uday Singh, was already employed in govt service before Purshottam Singh’s death. The court noted that Rule 5 of the 1996 Rules “bars compassionate appointment where the spouse or at least one eligible child of the deceased govt servant is already employed in govt service or a specified govt-controlled body,” and that the rule provides an exception only where the widow seeks employment for herself.Subsequently, before the division bench, her counsel Apoorva Agarwal argued that the application was wrongly rejected because the elder son did not qualify as a dependent under the Rajasthan Compassionate Appointment of Dependents of Deceased Govt Servants Rules, 1996.The high court said that “compassionate appointment is intended to help a family tide over the sudden financial crisis caused by the death of its earning member,” and “not to secure a job for the family”.The court also pointed out that the petition was filed nearly a year after the govt rejection and recorded that it was repeatedly dismissed by the high court registrar (Judicial) because defects were not cured despite several opportunities. Though restored more than once, the defects continued, leading the court to observe that the appellant was negligent in pursuing the case.
