Married daughters may be considered for compassionate appointment only if wholly dependent on the employee at death.

The applicant’s mother, a Railway employee, died in harness on 1 January 2018. The applicant, who had married before her mother’s death, applied for compassionate appointment on 8 July 2022.

The respondents rejected her claim, finding that she had not been wholly dependent on her mother when she died. The applicant challenged that decision before the Tribunal.

The respondents relied, among other matters, on the delay in applying, the applicant’s marriage and residence with her husband, and her husband’s employment and income. The applicant said she had been dependent on her mother and that she had delayed applying because she was advised to obtain the requisite educational qualification.

Whether the applicant, as a married daughter, qualified for compassionate appointment as a dependent of her deceased mother

Whether the respondents were justified in rejecting the claim on the ground that the applicant had not established her dependency on her mother at the time of her death

Under the Railway Board instructions discussed by the Tribunal, a married daughter may be considered for compassionate appointment, subject to the applicable conditions, including that she was wholly dependent on the deceased employee at the time of death; the instructions also refer to the married daughter being the breadwinner of the employee’s family.

Compassionate appointment is an exception intended to relieve a family’s immediate financial hardship, not a vested right or an entitlement that may be claimed indefinitely after the crisis has passed. The Tribunal relied on Umesh Kumar Nagpal v. State of Haryana, (1994) 4 SCC 138, and The State of West Bengal v. Debabrata Tiwari, Civil Appeal Nos. 8842–8855 of 2022, decided 3 March 2023, for these principles.

The Tribunal assessed dependency by considering the applicant’s residence and the circumstances of her household. The applicant provided no evidence to support her assertion that she lived with her mother; the record instead showed that her husband worked at a petrol pump in Pratapgarh and that the applicant’s schooling was also in Pratapgarh, while her mother worked in Valsad, Gujarat.

The husband’s employment ended only in July 2022, more than four years after the mother’s death, and the applicant’s application was made in July 2022. Although the applicant attributed the delay to advice to obtain educational qualifications, the Tribunal found no evidence supporting that explanation and concluded that the circumstances did not establish that she was wholly dependent on her mother when she died.

It dismissed the OA as devoid of merit, disposed of the associated MAs, and directed the parties to bear their own costs.