"Marriage Doesn't Break Daughter's Bond with Her Parents'": Tripura High Court

A Division Bench of Tripura High Court headed by Chief Justice Indrajit Mohanty and Justice SC Chattopadhyay has recently upheld the earlier decision by a single judge bench to include married daughters, who are dependent on their father’s income, in the state government scheme, Die-in-Harness. The scheme came into effect in 2018 through the owning to the decision taken by the council of ministers and provided a compassionate appointment.

Compassionate Appointment is a scheme for social security under which appointment is given to a dependent family member on a compassionate basis when someone of their family dies while serving for government or retires owing to medical reasons. Married Daughters were excluded from this die-in-harness scheme which was the reason for multiple writ petitions being filed against the same. The single-judge bench gave judgment in favor of the petitioners and the provision of excluding married daughters was declared unconstitutional. In view of this decision by the single bench, the state government approached the divisional bench for the review of the order of the single judge bench on the die-in-harness scheme.

The divisional bench upheld the decision of the single bench and stated that “Marriage does not break the bond between a daughter and her parents as it does not do between a son and his parents. A crisis in the family of her parents equally worries a married daughter. As such, there is no rationale behind exclusion of a married daughter from the scheme.”

1 The bench also held that the scheme was discriminatory if tested on the touchstone of the right to equality under Articles 14 to 16 of the Indian Constitution.

1. https://www.scconline.com/blog/post/2022/02/10/tri-hc-exclusion-of-married-daughters-from-the-die-in-

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Legal News by Gaurang Takkar