14-year fight ends in victory: Court slams Bokaro Steel Plant, orders job for son, Rs 50,000 fine

After 14 years of legal battle, a man has won a case in the Jharkhand High Court against Bokaro Steel Plant, which denied him a job appointment on compassionate grounds after his father died. The court held the company guilty of wrongly denying the job benefit.

Justice Rajesh Shankar said that the company had adopted a “narrow interpretation” of its policy in denying the petitioner employment. Imposing Rs 50,000 in costs on the company, the court called the conduct “arbitrary”.

The medical board constituted by the company denied the job to the son on the grounds that his father had died in 2011 due to heart complications, which did not fall under the eligible category. The wife of the late employee then approached the Medical Council of India, challenging the decision of the company medical board.

The ethics committee of the Medical Council of India (MCI) opined that the late employee was suffering from many morbidities and chronic diseases and should have been declared medically unfit for the job, which was contrary to the opinion of the company medical board that had declared him fit.

Considering the MCI report, the court said, “The conduct of the respondents clearly suggests that from the very beginning, they have been adopting different tactics to deny relief to the appellant. Though the deceased employee was examined by the Medical Board on December 16, 2011, and he died on December 18, 2011, i.e., after two days, the decision was taken by the board only on January 6, 2012, i.e., after more than twenty days from the date of his medical examination.”

Justice Rajesh Shankar heard the matter on June 29.

Justice Shankar highlighted that the very purpose of a compassionate appointment is to give immediate financial assistance to the dependent family members of the deceased/medically invalidated employee to overcome the financial distress.

He continued, “The employee had died in December 2011, and more than 14 years have passed since then. As such, at this belated stage, it will not be appropriate to relegate the appellant to seek remedy before the Central Administrative Tribunal, Circuit Bench, Ranchi, as this will literally amount to denying justice to the appellant.”

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Heart disease claim wrongly ignored

Appearing for the petitioner, advocate Brij Bihari Sinha and Ishank Ranjan submitted that the father of the petitioner was an employee of Bokaro Steel Plant, and he was suffering from heart disease.

It was stated that the deceased employee was treated at Bokaro General Hospital and Abdur Razzaque Ansari Memorial Weavers’ Hospital, Irba, Ranchi. He filed an application for declaring him medically invalid, claiming that he was suffering from ‘heart disease/paralysis’.

They submitted that thereafter, he was medically examined by the Medical Invalidation Board (MIB); however, he subsequently died just two days after the medical examination. In the death certificate of the deceased employee issued by the BGH, the cause of death was mentioned as ‘septicemia with shock ’, and under the diagnosis column, ‘sudden cardiac arrest ’, apart from other diseases, was mentioned. Despite recording that he suffered from ischaemic heart disease, the MIB declared him “medically not invalid.”

After his father’s death, Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), under which Bokaro Steel Plant comes, rejected the family’s claim for a compassionate job, relying on the death certificate, which listed the cause of death as “Septicemia with Shock,” and instead offered benefits under the Employee Family Benefit Scheme.

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Despite all these, the respondents, for one reason or another, have been adamant in declining such a legitimate job claim of the appellant. It is thus a gross case of arbitrariness and a mala fide attitude of the respondents towards the vulnerable appellant.

Callous attitude caused 14-year struggle: Order

The facts show that the employee was suffering from heart disease, which was included in the list of debilitating diseases. Therefore, the authorities should have declared him medically invalid.

The records also show that the appellant’s mother filed a complaint before the Medical Council of India against the doctors of Bokaro General Hospital, alleging that they wrongly declared the deceased employee as “medically not invalid.”

Medical Council of India constituted an Ethics Committee, which submitted its report observing that the deceased employee was indeed suffering from many morbidities and chronic diseases and should have been declared medically unfit for the job.

It was further observed that the argument of the doctors that they had evaluated the patient as per the Medical Invalidation Board-based guidelines and as per the list of certain enlisted conditions only was not acceptable.

The Medical Council of India also ordered the removal of the names of the concerned doctors who had examined the father of the appellant from the Indian Medical Register for a period of one month.

The ethics committee of the Medical Council of India was also of the opinion that the deceased employee was suffering from many morbidities and chronic diseases and should have been declared medically unfit for the job.

Even after the decision of the ethics committee of the Medical Council of India, the appellant was not provided a compassionate appointment.

This court takes serious note of such conduct of the respondents, which is bound to be deprecated in the strongest terms, and they deserve to be saddled with an exemplary cost.

The respondents are also directed to pay the cost of Rs 50,000 to the appellant, as he was made to suffer due to their callous attitude and had to struggle for more than 14 years to get a compassionate appointment.