IN THE HIGH COURT OF ORISSA AT CUTTACK W.P.(C) No.15914 of 2023 In the matter of an application under Articles 226 & 227 of the Constitution of India, 1950. --- Mrutyunjay Bose …. Petitioner -versus- 1. Steel Authority of India Limited, Rourkela Steel Plant, Rourkela represented through its Managing Director 2. The Executive Director (Personal & Administration), Rourkela Steel Plant, Rourkela …. Opposite Parties Advocates who have Appeared in this case For Petitioner - Mr.Sushanta Ku. Mishra. Advocate For Opp. Parties - M/s.B.P. Tripathy, D. Pradhan & G.S. Das, Advocates --- C O R A M : MR. JUSTICE KRISHNA S.DIXIT MR. JUSTICE CHITTARANJAN DASH ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date of Hearing & Date of Judgment : 11.05.2026 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PER KRISHNA S DIXIT, J. One Mr. Atul Chandra Bose, who was working as Store Keeper since 1965 was in the Grade of Store Keeper L- 9 when he was detected with cancer on 12.07.1993. It is told at the Bar that the cancer was cured and that he reported for full duty. However, he met with his Maker on 22.08.1998 and cause of death as per the Medical Certificate is not cancer. 2. The Petitioner being the son of deceased had applied for Compassionate Appointment on 27.11.1998 in terms of SAILS’s Policy Guidelines dated 01.01.1996. The said Policy Guidelines availed at Annexure-D prescribed the eligibility criteria as under: “… An employee diagnosed to be suffering from any of the following ailments by the Company’s Doctor evidenced by the Company’s Medical records and availing of treatment on that account in the Company’s Hospital or referral hospital and dying while under such treatment will be covered under this Scheme. a) Failure of kidney b) Heart Strokes c) Cancer” SAIL vide order dated 15.01.2000 had asked the Petitioner to submit certain documents, which his counsel tells us, were submitted. However, his claim was rejected vide order dated 21.04.2000 leading to the institution of OJC No.1747 of 2000. The said OJC came to be transferred to the CAT, Cuttack and it was re-registered as TA No.16 of 2016. The said case having been turned down, this Writ Petition is filed invoking Articles 226 & 227 of the Constitution of India. 3. After service of notice, the Opposite Parties having entered appearance through their Panel Counsel resists the Petition making submission in justification of Tribunal’s order and reasons on which it has been constructed. The Panel Counsel passionately submits that Compassionate Appointment is only an exception to the General Rule of recruitment in public service and therefore, the Policy conditions governing the same have to be scrupulously followed. He drew our attention to the Policy as well. 4. Having heard learned counsel for the parties and having perused the Petition papers, we decline indulgence in the matter broadly agreeing with the reasoning of Tribunal that the claim for Compassionate Appointment cannot be successfully made if cause of death is not an ailment relating to kidney, heart or cancer. The bread winner was suffering from cancer, the same having been detected on 12.07.1993, is not in dispute. There is a Medical Certificate which does not indicate that the cause of death of the bread winner was cancer. No material is produced before us to show that death was due to cancer. When policy specifies certain grounds for claiming Compassionate Appointment, such claims cannot be favoured de hors the Policy, as rightly submitted by learned Panel Counsel appearing for the Opposite Parties. Apparently, there is no challenge to the policy conditions and therefore, we cannot examine the validity of such conditions without necessary pleadings to that effect. 4.1. Cause of an event is one thing and its condition is another which aspect has been discussed by Professors H.L.A Hart & A.M. Honore in their famous work ‘Causation In The Law’, Oxford University Press 1959. Cause and conditions are two different things and at times they are poles asunder. In Chapter-V ‘Causation and sine qua non’ at pages 106 & 107, it is said as under: “...These three points taken together yield three different ways, hidden by the general expression "necessary', in which a cause may be said to be a necessary condition of the consequence. 1. A condition may be necessary just in the sense that it is one of a set of conditions jointly sufficient for the production of the consequence: it is necessary because it is required to complete this set. If we consider the simple case where a man's action in throwing a lighted cigarette into the waste- paper basket would be treated both by common sense and the law as the cause of the fire, it is plain that the man's action is required to complete such a set of conditions jointly sufficient to produce the fire. Page 5 of 7 2. A condition may be necessary in a stronger sense, viz. that we may know that it is a necessary member of every set of sufficient conditions of a given type of occurrence. Thus we know that the presence of oxygen is in this sense a necessary condition of fire: no fire can occur without it and, though we believe that there are many alternative sets of sufficient conditions for fire, in all of them oxygen figures as a necessary constituent. 3. A condition which is necessary in the first of these ways may still not be necessary in a third sense, required in a sine qua non, for it may not be necessary on the particular occasion for the occurrence of the event. This is so because the normal assumption that on any given occasion only one sufficient cause is present may break down: two men may shoot and simultaneously lodge a bullet in their victim's brain or they may simultaneously approach escaping gas with a lighted candle. But if, as we ordinarily assume, for every such event there is present on any given occasion one and only one independent set of conditions sufficient to produce it, then every member of this set will be necessary on that occasion for the occurrence of the event and hence a condition sine qua non of it. Of every such condition it is true both that it is required to complete the conditions sufficient to produce the event, and that the event would not have occurred without it. A condition which is necessary in any of the above three ways is a causally relevant factor whether it is ranked as 'the cause' … or as a 'mere' condition like the presence of oxygen...” At times there may be blurred a boundary line between these. Even that has not been demonstrated before this Court. Therefore, merely because a person long suffering from cancer dies, This Court cannot hastily decide that the predominant cause of death in cancer. To put it shortly, cancer was the condition and not the cause. Differentiating cause from condition is a matter of nuance. Thus, causal connection between the two is missing. 4.2. The vehement submission of the learned counsel for the Petitioner that in more or less similar circumstances, a Co-ordinate Bench of this Court between Sashikanta Singh v. Steel Authority of India Limited and Others, OLR 2022(11)-775 has granted relief to the children of bread winner of the kind dying in harness does not advance his case. That was a case where death happened suddenly and the family was thus driven to distress by the bolt from the blue, which is not the case here. Nothing is placed on record as to what all terminal benefits have been received by the family on the demise of the Employee. There is absolutely no material to prima facie presume that the distress of the family still continues. This view gains support from what Samaraditya Pal in ‘Law Relating to Public Service’, 3rd Edition says at Page-216 that reads as: “… It has also been pointed out that it is neither a vested right which can be exercised at anytime even after the crisis created by the death is over, nor a hereditary right nor can it be bequeathed. Having regard to the object , claim for such appointment cannot be kept alive for ever. …” 4.3. Added to the above, cancer was detected in the body of bread winner on 12.07.1993 and he died only on 22.08.1998 and thus the time span between detection of disease and death exceeds five years; it’s a long period. Death Certificate is issued under the provisions of the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969. Such certificate arising in due discharge of public duties would have some presumptive value for rebuttal of which cogent material is not placed before the Court. Long ago, it is Lords Halsbury who said in Quinn vs. Leathem. [1901] AC 495 (H.L.) that a decision is an authority for the proposition that has been laid down in a given fact matrix, and not for all that which logically follows from what has been so laid down. Thus, the said ruling does not yield any milk to the Petitioners. In the above circumstances, this Writ Petition fails. No costs. This Court places on record its deep appreciation for the able research & assistance rendered by its Law Clerk-cum- Research Assistant Mr. Mohammed Nihad Sharief. (Krishna S. Dixit) Judge (Chittaranjan Dash) Judge A.K. Pradhan/Priyanka Designation: Senior Stenographer