HC flays govt officials' lethargic attitude

Slamming the lethargic attitude of officials in dealing with a plea by the family of a government employee for a job on compassionate ground for the past three decades, the Madras High Court Bench here today observed a policy should be evolved for all government servants to make them perform their duty in a time-bound manner.
Allowing a petition by one G Karthikeyan for job on compassionate ground after his father died in harness in 1979, Justice R Mahadevan rapped the Director and Assistant Director of Tamil Nadu Survey Department for rejecting the plea and said officials should know "time is essence of such matters."

"A right thing not done within the stipulated time and wrong thing done at a later point of time will have irreparable and inexplicable consequences," the Judge said.
Deviating from the judgement, he said "it is high time that the government should evolve a policy for all government servants to make them perform their duty in a time-bound manner.
"This is a classic example of the lethargic attitude of the government officials in considering the case of petitioner." Though the petitioner may be successful in getting justice on compassionate ground, the litigation itself had become a greater punishment", he added.

The government should fix responsibility on individual officials concerned in important issues like issuing patta, community certificate and ask them to issue them in a time frame, the judge observed.

He described as "alarming" the callous attitude of the officials in processing the case of the petitioner. In fact, the petitioner's mother applied for the job in 1979 itself after the death of her husband as her son was a minor then.
She was then told that as her husband's service had not been regularised, she was not entitled to job. After a legal battle in the labour court, her husband's service was regularised in 2009 posthumously.

By the time, the petitioner became a major and he applied for the job on compassionate ground. The officials gave a different reason while rejecting his plea in October, 2010 that he did not seek appointment within three years.
When the petitioner got some ray of hope, after losing his prime youth, his application had been rejected. "This will cause mental agony for him," he said.