The Chhattisgarh High Court has ruled that marital status cannot disqualify daughters from compassionate job appointments. The court directed Chhattisgarh Rajya Gramin Bank to process applications for two women, stating that discriminating against married daughters while permitting married sons violates constitutional equality.
In a significant ruling regarding gender equality in employment, the Chhattisgarh High Court has declared that marital status cannot be used as a ground to deny compassionate appointments to women. The division bench, led by Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Ravindra Kumar Agrawal, issued this directive to the Chhattisgarh Rajya Gramin Bank, a Regional Rural Bank (RRB) sponsored by the State Bank of India.
The case involved two applicants, Sheena David and Ankita Mishra, who were previously denied jobs following the death of their fathers, who were former bank employees. The bank had rejected their applications citing their marital status. The court scrutinized the bank’s internal policy, finding that it created an arbitrary distinction between married sons and married daughters. While married sons were eligible for such appointments, married daughters were being disqualified, a practice the court found to be legally indefensible.
The bench emphasized that under the Constitution of India, specifically Articles 14 and 15, such gender-based discrimination is unconstitutional. The judges noted that dependency is a matter of factual financial reality rather than marital status. By holding that a married daughter must be treated on par with a married son, the court rejected the notion that a daughter ceases to be a dependent upon marriage.
This ruling carries broader implications for Regional Rural Banks and other public sector entities. It establishes a binding legal precedent that may require various government-backed institutions to review and amend their human resource policies. If existing internal schemes for compassionate appointments rely on marital status as a disqualification criterion, those organizations may now face a need to align their rules with this constitutional interpretation to avoid further legal challenges.
The Chhattisgarh Rajya Gramin Bank is a Regional Rural Bank owned by the Central Government, the State Government of Chhattisgarh, and the State Bank of India. Because it is not a publicly traded company, this legal development does not have a stock market impact. For applicants and public sector HR departments, however, the 90-day implementation window set by the court serves as a critical timeline for ensuring compliance with this new judicial mandate.