Degree of administrative apathy disheartening: HC

Coming down heavily on “systemic indifference” that forced an 80-year-old destitute widow to struggle for nearly five decades for her late husband’s retirement dues, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed the senior bureaucracy to intervene.

Justice Harpreet Singh Brar has directed Principal Secretary/Administrative Incharge, Haryana Electricity Department, to “personally examine the veracity of the petitioner’s claims within a period of two months and to ensure that all lawful benefits due to the petitioner are released forthwith.”

The direction came as the Bench admonished the inaction, holding that the case presented “a disheartening and distressing picture of administrative apathy” and said relief to the weakest was not charity but a constitutional mandate.

The court said: “In the present case, the petitioner, an illiterate and destitute widow, has been compelled to run from pillar to post for nearly five decades and ultimately approach this court in her struggle to secure the grant of family pension and other retirement benefits of her late husband.”

Referring to the human cost of the neglect, it said the case painted a disheartening picture of administrative apathy. “An aged widow, already burdened by grief and financial hardship, is being made to suffer further because of systemic indifference and procedural neglect.”

“What is particularly distressing is that, throughout her prolonged ordeal, the poor widow was kept completely uninformed about any decision regarding her claim,” said the judge.

Critical of the power utility’s attitude, he said reply under the RTI Act dated October 19, 2022, stated that the information could not be supplied as the matter was “very old” and no record was available.

The Bench pointed out that the respondents complicated matters by taking a new stand in their written reply by asserting that her late husband was not covered under the GPF/pension scheme of the board.

Turning to the broader constitutional principles, the court said the constitutional courts “bear a sacred obligation to uphold fundamental rights and to ensure that the constitutional vision extends its reach to the most vulnerable sections of society”.

The court reiterated that ensuring relief to the oppressed was not magnanimity, but a constitutional responsibility. “Extending relief to a voiceless 80-year-old widow and securing her rights is thus not a matter of judicial discretion or benevolence, rather it is a constitutional imperative anchored in the Preamble and Articles 14, 19, and 21 of the Constitution,” it said.