An important ruling that got lost in the din

Well, an important judgement of the Punjab & Haryana High Court, that I wanted to share earlier, got lost in the mix somewhere.

The Haryana Government (and many others States too, it is learnt) had in effect a policy which discriminated between sons and daughters of ex-servicemen. The said policy provided that for the purposes of employment, married sons not having an independent source of income would be considered dependants for the purpose of issuance of a dependant certificate while married daughters would not be considered such even if not having any income. This had ostensibly been done by the Haryana Govt on the pretext that while a married son could be dependent on his father, a married daughter would not be since she would be dependent on her husband.

Not finding the above distinction reasonable and holding it to be unconstitutional, the Punjab & Haryana High Court has struck down the said clause and it has been held that both married sons and daughters, if not having independent means of livelihood, would be considered eligible for the issuance of the dependant certificate.

Many other strange stipulations of the Defence Services Welfare wing and the Sainik Board of the State of Haryana have in the past faced flak from the High Court.