Can’t deny compassionate job even if kin hold govt posts: HC

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has held that the State government cannot deny a job opportunity to a woman on the grounds that her husband and her brothers-in-law have government jobs.

He passed this direction while disposing of a petition filed by a V Sundari. She wanted a GO rejecting her job request quashed. She had applied for it in 2001 after the death of her father who was an office assistant at a panchayat school in Karunguzhi village.

“The petitioner applied for the job on compassionate grounds in 2001, the government rejected her application in 2015. The grounds for rejection are unacceptable,” the judge held.

T Chezhiyan, the additional government pleader, submitted that the petitioner’s application was rejected after it was found her husband and her three sisters’ husbands had government jobs. The judge rejected the AGP’s contention observing that the petitioner’s husband was merely a public welfare servant and it was a temporary post.

“It was the respondents’ fault. She was unmarried in 2001,” the judge observed.