HC junks plea against decision to give job to Vemula's brother

Delhi High Court today dismissed a petition challenging the AAP government's decision to award a group 'C' government job to the brother of Hyderabad University Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, who had committed suicide.
A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal said they were not going into the merits of the matter, after the government said that Rohith's brother was himself not interested in taking up the job offered to him on compassionate ground.
Delhi government's senior standing counsel Rahul Mehra told the bench that the petitioner cannot raise such issue in the name of a public interest litigation (PIL) as he cannot say he was aggrieved by the decision.

Mehra said since Rohith's brother, Vemula Raja Chaithanya Kumar, was not interested in taking up the job, "nothing survives in this plea".
Petitioner advocate Avadh Kaushik asked the bench "how can Delhi government give job to a person who has nothing to do with Delhi on compassionate ground?"
However, the bench said they would not go into the merits of the case.

The plea had challenged the government's decision, which was notified on March 3, as well as government accommodation on out of turn basis, saying it was "illegal, arbitrary and politically motivated".
The petitioner had alleged that the Cabinet decision was "illegal, arbitrary, motivated, discriminatory and unjustifiable and unfair exercise of discretion without any mandate of law, statute, policy and guidelines".

It said there was no need to give a job on compassionate grounds to the kin of Rohith as he "was neither a resident of Delhi nor was a government employee under Delhi administration or for that matter, under any Government organisation, and he was also not a student in any University/college connected or affiliated to Delhi in any manner and even no offence or any wrong act whatsoever had been committed against him in Delhi".