Union of India and Anr. v. V.R. Tripathi
Background
The respondent's father, a Central Railways technician, died in service in 2009. He had contracted a second marriage in 1987 while his first marriage subsisted, and the respondent was born from that second marriage. When the respondent applied for a compassionate appointment following his father's death, the Railway Authorities rejected it, citing a 1992 Railway Board circular that barred compassionate appointment to children of a second marriage unless the administration had specifically permitted that marriage. The Central Administrative Tribunal and the Bombay High Court both ruled in the respondent's favour, prompting the Union of India to appeal to the Supreme Court. A companion appeal involving a similar issue under Muslim personal law was heard together.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that Section 16(1) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 deems a child born from a void (bigamous) marriage to be legitimate, and that while Section 16(3) limits such a child's property rights to only the parents' property, it does not strip away the legitimacy recognised under Section 16(1) for any other purpose. The Court reasoned that since the law treats such children as legitimate, the Railway Board's circular, which denied them compassionate appointment solely because their mother was a second wife, created an arbitrary and unconstitutional classification between two groups of equally legitimate children, violating Article 14. The Court also disapproved of the Railway Board reissuing essentially the same circular in 2013 even after it had already been struck down by the Calcutta High Court in Namita Goldar v Union of India, which had attained finality. Both appeals were dismissed, with directions that the authorities decide the compassionate appointment applications on their individual merits (including financial need) within three months, without further reliance on the discriminatory circular.
Lesson Learnt
A law or policy that uses an employee's choice (such as a bigamous marriage) to penalize an innocent dependent, like a child who the law already deems legitimate, is constitutionally suspect: benefits meant to protect a deceased employee's family from destitution cannot be denied to legitimate children merely because of which marriage they were born from.