पटना हाई कोर्ट ने केंद्रीय बैंक ऑफ़ इंडिया के ‘अविवाहित’ शब्द को हटाकर दया‑नियुक्ति योजना में शादीशुदा बेटे के आवेदन को खारिज करने के आदेश को निरस्त किया

The rejection rested on one word that the scheme itself does not contain. The Bank’s compassionate-appointment scheme entitles a ‘wholly dependent son’ to be considered; it does not say ‘unmarried son’. Yet the Bank rejected a married applicant by borrowing the word ‘unmarried’ from its service regulations and its health-insurance policy. The Patna High Court held that this could not be done: a self-contained scheme must be read as it stands, and where its drafters deliberately omitted ‘unmarried’ while other documents used it, the Bank cannot introduce the qualification through the back door to deny a claim.

Patna: The Patna High Court has quashed an order of the Central Bank of India rejecting a claim for compassionate appointment made by the married son of a deceased employee, holding that the Bank’s own Scheme for compassionate appointment defines a dependent family member as a ‘wholly dependent son’ without any requirement that he be unmarried, and that the Bank cannot import that requirement from outside the Scheme [Sintu Kumar v. Central Bank of India and Others].

Justice Partha Sarthy allowed the writ petition and directed the Bank to reconsider the petitioner’s case in accordance with the applicable Scheme.

The background

The petitioner’s mother had served the Central Bank of India as a Safai Karamchari for more than 21 years before dying in harness in March 2024. He applied for appointment on compassionate grounds, and by an order of August 2025 the Zonal Head rejected the application mainly on the ground that, being married, he could not be considered wholly dependent on the deceased employee. The petitioner challenged that rejection.

His case was that the Bank’s Scheme of April 2015 entitles a dependent family member of a permanent employee dying in service to compassionate appointment, that the Scheme defines a dependent family member to include a ‘wholly dependent son’, and that it draws no distinction between a married and an unmarried son, the word ‘wholly dependent son’ being itself undefined in the Scheme. He pointed to his income certificate showing an annual income well below the threshold used to identify a wholly dependent family member.

The Bank’s case

The Bank submitted that, since ‘wholly dependent son’ is not defined in the compassionate-appointment Scheme, assistance had to be taken from other instruments. It relied on the Central Bank of India (Officers’) Service Regulations, 1979, which define ‘family’, in the case of children, as ‘wholly dependent unmarried children’; on the definition of family in the Bank’s Group Health Insurance Policy for serving staff, to the same effect; and on a memorandum of settlement and a set of Frequently Asked Questions issued by the Indian Banks’ Association, under which the term ‘wholly dependent’ as defined in the bipartite settlement would apply in ascertaining dependency. On that basis, the Bank argued, the applicant’s son had to be unmarried, and the married petitioner had been rightly rejected.

A self-contained scheme cannot be supplemented from outside

The Court rejected each of the external sources in turn. The Service Regulations of 1979, it held, applied to officers of the Bank, whereas the petitioner’s mother had died while working as a full-time Safai Karamchari, so their definition of family as ‘wholly dependent unmarried children’ had no application. The Group Health Insurance Policy, by its own heading, was for the distinct purpose of health insurance for serving staff, not compassionate appointment, so reliance on it was misplaced. And the Indian Banks’ Association FAQs, on which the Bank relied, were a clarification issued with respect to an earlier 2014 circular, whereas the Central Bank of India had subsequently formulated its own Scheme of April 2015.

That Scheme, the Court held, is a complete scheme in itself, and its definition of ‘dependent family member’ must be taken as it stands and cannot be supplemented by importing part-definitions from outside it:

“…the respondent-Bank cannot be permitted to introduce the word ‘unmarried’ in the definition of ‘dependent family member’ in their scheme of compassionate appointment.”

The deliberate contrast in drafting was, for the Court, decisive. Because the Scheme’s definition of a dependent family member spoke simply of a ‘wholly dependent son’ and a ‘wholly dependent daughter’, while the Regulations of 1979 and the health-insurance policy used the phrase ‘wholly dependent unmarried children’, the officers who drafted the Scheme had purposely left out the word ‘unmarried’. The Bank could not now read it back in to defeat the claim.

Noting that the object of a compassionate-appointment scheme is to provide immediate financial relief to the family of a deceased employee, and that the Scheme made no distinction between a married and an unmarried son or daughter, the Court held that the Bank had erred in rejecting the application on the ground of the petitioner’s marital status. It set aside the rejection order and directed the Bank to consider the petitioner’s case in the light of the Scheme and its observations, expeditiously and within three months.

Why it matters

The judgment applies a basic canon of construction to the everyday administration of welfare benefits: where a scheme is a complete and self-contained code, its terms are to be read as its drafters wrote them, and an authority cannot graft on a restriction the scheme itself omits by borrowing language from unrelated instruments. The point is sharpened by the deliberate contrast the Court identified, the same bank used ‘wholly dependent unmarried children’ in its service regulations and its insurance policy but only ‘wholly dependent son’ in its compassionate-appointment scheme, which strongly indicates a considered choice to leave marital status out of the compassionate context.

The ruling also fits a broader current in service jurisprudence disapproving the use of marital status as an automatic disqualifier for compassionate appointment or death benefits, a current visible in recent decisions holding that a married daughter cannot be excluded on that ground alone. While the present case turns on the construction of a particular scheme rather than on a constitutional equality holding, it reaches a compatible result: the benefit follows dependency, which the scheme makes the touchstone, and not the applicant’s married or unmarried state, which the scheme does not mention.

For the petitioner, the outcome is not an appointment but a fresh, lawful consideration of his claim: the Court set aside the flawed ground of rejection and remitted the matter, directing the Bank to decide it within three months by reference to the Scheme, under which dependency, not marital status, is the criterion. For public-sector employers generally, the message is that the definitions in a compassionate-appointment scheme cannot be quietly expanded to the applicant’s disadvantage by importing qualifiers from documents drawn up for other purposes.

Case Title: Sintu Kumar v. Central Bank of India and Others [Civil Writ Jurisdiction Case No. 20166 of 2025]

Bench: Justice Partha Sarthy, High Court of Judicature at Patna

Date of Judgment: September 19, 2026 (reserved September 15, 2026)

Appearances: Advocate Sanjay Prasad for the petitioner. Advocate Nishi Nath Ojha for the Central Bank of India.

Status: Writ petition allowed. Rejection order set aside; Bank directed to reconsider the compassionate-appointment claim under its Scheme within three months.

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