The Supreme Court has held that Rule 23(1) of the Haryana Civil Services (Compassionate Financial Assistance or Appointment) Rules, 2019 applies only to claims for compassionate financial assistance and cannot be invoked to defer or deny a claim for compassionate appointment. The Court said that the text, heading, and structure of the Rules treat the two forms of relief as separate and independent statutory domains, and the omission of compassionate appointment from Rule 23(1) is deliberate. Further, the sequential hierarchy created by the “failing” language in Rule 5(1)(f) for compassionate financial assistance cannot be imported into Rule 5(1)(g) governing compassionate appointment, which contains no such conditional bar.
The Court additionally held that Rule 23(1), within its proper domain of compassionate financial assistance, is constitutionally valid and does not violate Article 14, because it is a temporary, preventive, and rationally connected regulatory measure. However, that constitutional validity does not justify extending it to compassionate appointment claims. Accordingly, the Court directed the respondents to consider and decide the appellant’s claim for compassionate appointment on its own merits, strictly in accordance with the eligibility conditions, procedures, and requirements prescribed under the Rules of 2019, within three months.
A Two-Judge Bench comprising Justice Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singhand Justice Sanjay Karol first reiterated the settled principle that compassionate appointment is not a vested or heritable right, but a relief extended by the State as a humane response to sudden financial distress caused by the death in harness of the breadwinner, subject to satisfaction of the eligibility conditions prescribed by the governing rules. At the same time, the Bench emphasised that if the claimant must satisfy the rules strictly, the State must equally justify refusal or deferment of such claim only by relying on a provision that actually applies to the form of relief claimed.
The Bench held that Rule 23(1), on its plain language, governs only “compassionate financial assistance” and not “compassionate appointment”. It noted that both the marginal heading and the body of Rule 23 use only the expression “compassionate financial assistance”, and nowhere mention compassionate appointment. The Bench therefore rejected the State’s purposive construction argument, observing that extending Rule 23(1) to compassionate appointment would amount not to interpretation but to judicial legislation.
The Bench further found that the Rules of 2019 structurally maintain a clear distinction between compassionate financial assistance and compassionate appointment through separate definitions, separate descriptions of “family”, separate procedures, and separate competent authorities. Against that legislative architecture, the omission of compassionate appointment from Rule 23(1) had to be treated as deliberate and intentional.
On the High Court’s view that the widow’s claim had to be determined first, the Bench held that this improperly imported the priority mechanism of Rule 5(1)(f), which applies to compassionate financial assistance, into Rule 5(1)(g), which applies to compassionate appointment. The Bench stressed that Rule 5(1)(f) uses cascading “failing” language to create a sequential hierarchy, whereas Rule 5(1)(g) contains no such language and is only a list of persons constituting “family” for compassionate appointment. Accordingly, children are not automatically barred from consideration merely because the widow is alive or her claim is unresolved, especially where the widow herself does not seek appointment.
The Bench nevertheless upheld the constitutional validity of Rule 23(1) in its proper field, namely compassionate financial assistance, holding that it is preventive and regulatory rather than penal, and that the temporary suspension it creates during criminal proceedings has a rational nexus with the object of preventing a potentially culpable person from accessing the benefit arising from the employee’s death. However, the Bench stated that constitutional validity does not enlarge the provision’s field of operation, and Rule 23(1) therefore remained inapplicable to the appellant’s claim for compassionate appointment.
The Bench also expressly noted an anomaly in the Rules of 2019: the lesser relief of financial assistance is expressly suspended during criminal proceedings for murder or abetment of the employee’s death, while the greater relief of compassionate appointment contains no parallel restriction. The Bench considered it strongly desirable that the State Government address this legislative lacuna by amending the Rules, while clarifying that the Court itself could not read such a restriction into the existing framework.
Briefly, the appellant, Atul Chauhan, challenged the High Court’s judgment upholding Rule 23(1) of the Haryana Civil Services (Compassionate Financial Assistance or Appointment) Rules, 2019 and rejecting his claim for compassionate appointment after the death of his father, a Junior Basic Teacher employed with the Government of Haryana, who died in service on 28 September 2021 in suspicious circumstances arising out of a road accident. Thereafter, the appellant’s mother was prosecuted under Section 302 IPC on allegations of conspiring in the murder of the deceased employee. During this period, the family sought release of service benefits and compassionate relief, and the departmental authorities indicated that the widow was not entitled pending the operation of the Rules of 2019, while asking that the children’s documents be forwarded if they were majors.
The appellant’s mother executed an affidavit stating that the post-death benefits may be issued in her name, or if there was any legal obstacle, in favour of both sons, and she further stated that she had no objection to benefits being extended to her sons. The appellant also relied on affidavits by his mother and brother relinquishing their claims in his favour. Meanwhile, after a first writ petition resulted in a direction to decide his representation, the appellant renewed his request for compassionate appointment. His mother was later acquitted by the trial court on 14 October 2024, though only on benefit of doubt, and an appeal against that acquittal remained pending before the High Court.
The Director of Elementary Education nevertheless kept the appellant’s claim in abeyance until the conclusion of the criminal proceedings against his mother and later declined the claim, leading to the second writ petition in which the appellant assailed the constitutional validity of Rule 23(1) and sought consideration of his claim for compassionate appointment notwithstanding the pending criminal appeal. The High Court dismissed the petition, holding Rule 23(1) constitutionally valid, treating the widow as having the first right under the Rules of 2019, and holding that the pending appeal against acquittal rendered the appellant’s claim premature.
