A man died when a part of a machine fell on him while he was working in a factory. His illiterate widow applied for compensation but her claim was rejected because the evidence presented in court differed a little from what was written in the legal petition. She then appealed to the Madhya Pradesh High Court, which ruled that a compensation claim could not be rejected citing discrepancy in evidence when the labour commissioner has found that the accident happened at the workplace during duty hours. The court held that if the applicant was illiterate, slight variations in evidence should be overlooked (NTPC/VST PP, Vindhyanagar Sidhi vs Rajwati Panika).
The woman applied for an appointment on compassionate grounds in 1988, 17 years after the death of her husband. Her application was rejected. She again applied in 1993, this time asking that her daughter be appointed on the same grounds. When this application was also rejected, the daughter approached the Gujarat High Court. The court rejected the petition, pointing out that an appointment is made on compassionate grounds only to help a family to overcome a financial crisis because of the death of the breadwinner. In this case, the family seemed to have got on fine for the 35 years since the death of the man. The court, therefore, ruled that an appointment on compassionate grounds could not be granted in this case, especially as the daughter was married and presumably, looked after by her husband (Kinnariben Champaklal Shah vs State of Gujarat and another).
In a land dispute, arising out of a conflict between the dimension and boundaries of a property, the Sikkim High Court has ruled that it will be the boundary that the court will give more importance to. If a portion of the boundary is incorrectly described in the land deed, the papers will still be considered valid if the boundary that is described correctly enables the court to identify the property with legal certainty (Chewag Dorjee Lama vs Lerap Dorjee Bhutia).
SOLON
