Atul Chauhan v. State of Haryana
Supreme Court of India, 11 June 2026, 2 judges, 2026 INSC 640
Rule 23(1) of the Haryana compassionate assistance Rules of 2019, which suspends claims while a family member is tried for the employee's murder, covers only financial assistance, not compassionate appointment; courts cannot read in the omission.
Facts
The appellant's father, a government school teacher in Haryana, died in September 2021 in a road accident under suspicious circumstances. The appellant's mother was charged under Section 302 IPC with conspiring in his murder. She and the appellant's brother swore affidavits giving up their claims in favour of the appellant. The mother was acquitted in October 2024 on benefit of doubt, but the complainant's appeal against the acquittal was pending in the High Court. The State then kept the appellant's claim for compassionate appointment in abeyance until the criminal proceedings concluded, and later declined it, relying on Rule 23(1) of the Haryana Civil Services (Compassionate Financial Assistance or Appointment) Rules, 2019. The appellant's writ petition challenging Rule 23(1) was dismissed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which upheld the rule and held that the widow's prior claim under Rule 5(1)(f) had to be decided first. He appealed.
Questions before the Court
- Does Rule 23(1) of the Rules of 2019, which suspends claims to compassionate financial assistance during criminal proceedings for the employee's murder, apply to a claim for compassionate appointment?
- Must the widow's claim be conclusively decided before a child's claim for compassionate appointment can be considered?
- Is Rule 23(1) constitutionally valid under Article 14?
What the Court held
- Rule 23(1), by its text and marginal heading, applies only to compassionate financial assistance. Reading it to include compassionate appointment would be judicial legislation, not interpretation. Purposive construction resolves genuine ambiguity; it cannot override a clear text.
- The Rules treat the two forms of relief separately throughout (definitions, family, procedure, competent authority), so the omission of compassionate appointment from Rule 23(1) is deliberate.
- Rule 5(1)(f), for financial assistance, creates a sequential bar through the word 'failing'; Rule 5(1)(g), for appointment, has no such language. A child's claim for appointment is not barred merely because the widow's claim is undecided, and here the widow had disclaimed it.
- Rule 23(1) is valid under Article 14 in its own field: it is preventive and regulatory, only defers the benefit, and has a rational nexus with keeping the scheme from a person who may be culpable for the death.
- The anomaly that the lesser relief is suspended while appointment is not must be cured by the rule-making authority under Article 309, not by the Court. The appeal was allowed and the State directed to decide the claim on merits within three months, without any absolute right to appointment.
Why it matters
The judgment holds that a rule suspending compassionate financial assistance during a murder prosecution cannot be stretched to compassionate appointment, and it separates the question of a rule's validity from its applicability. It treats the presence or absence of 'failing' language as decisive on whether family members' claims are sequential. It also states that a gap in rules framed under Article 309 is for the rule-making authority to fill, and recommends that Haryana amend the Rules of 2019.
In the Court's words
Copied from the official judgment; each passage links to its page.
“This is not a case of ambiguous drafting that requires judicial resolution. This is a case of a provision which speaks clearly, specifically, and exclusively about one thing, i.e., compassionate financial assistance, and says nothing at all about another, viz., compassionate appointment. To read the former as including the latter would not be an act of statutory interpretation; it would be an act of judicial legislation.”
“Rule 23(1) of the Rules of 2019, by its express language and its marginal heading, applies only to claims for 'compassionate financial assistance'. It does not, by its text or by any permissible process of interpretation, extend to a claim for 'compassionate appointment'. The Respondent-State erred as a matter of law in invoking Rule 23(1) to defer the Appellant's claim for compassionate appointment. The High Court equally erred in upholding that application.”
“The provision is not penal in character; it is preventive and regulatory. It does not extinguish or permanently deny the right to compassionate financial assistance; it defers its exercise until the resolution of the antecedent question of criminal liability for the death of the Government employee.”
“We must, however, be clear that this Court cannot remedy the anomaly by reading into the Rules a provision which the legislature/State has not formulated. The judicial function is to apply the law as it is. It is for the Rule-making authority/State and the executive, in exercise of the rule-making power under Article 309, to clarify and rectify the legislative lacunae.”
Provisions interpreted
- Rule 23, Haryana Civil Services (Compassionate Financial Assistance or Appointment) Rules, 2019
- Rule 5(1)(f) and (g), Haryana Civil Services (Compassionate Financial Assistance or Appointment) Rules, 2019
- Article 14, Constitution
- Article 309, Constitution
Case and bench
- Parties
- Atul Chauhan v. State of Haryana
- Case
- Civil Appeal No. ___ of 2026 (arising out of Special Leave Petition (C) No. 25892 of 2025)
- Decided
- 11 June 2026
- Bench
- Sanjay Karol, Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh
- Opinions
- Judgment of the Court delivered by Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh, J.