Non-Registration Of Valid Adoption No Ground To Deny Compassionate Appointment To Adopted Son: Orissa High Court

The Orissa High Court has recently ruled that non-registration of an adoption deed before the death of adoptive father cannot be taken as a ground to deny the benefit of compassionate appointment to adoptive son, if the essential requirements of a valid adoption are otherwise complied with.Providing relief to the adoptive son of an ex-railway employee, the Division Bench of Justice Dixit Krishna Shripad and Justice Sibo Sankar Mishra held –“The Adoption Deed is registered long after the demise of employee concerned, is not much relevant to validity of adoption. It needs no mentioning that performance of prescribed rites is constitutive of adoption and subsequent execution & registration of Deed of Adoption is only evidentiary. In other words, the subject Deed only records the event of adoption. This subtle difference between accomplishment of adoption and the subsequent execution of document of adoption cannot be ignored, be it under the shaastrik process or under the provisions of the Hindu Adoption & Maintenance Act, 1956, more particularly when there is a civil court judgment.”The adoptive father of the opposite party-son was working as a Technician (C&W) in the Department of Railway, Government of India. He died in harness on 02.04.2008 for which his adopted son applied for availing the benefit of compassionate appointment. The department, however, turned down such application primarily on the ground that as per the existing policies, the adoption deed should have been executed before the death of the employee and that too, with the consent of the department.Being aggrieved by such rejection, the opposite party-son knocked the portals of the Central Administrative Tribunal, Cuttack which ruled in his favour. Challenging the said order of the Tribunal, the petitioner-Union Government filed this writ petition.The petitioners contended that they were not impleaded as parties to the civil suit wherein Civil Judge (Senior Division), Khallikote decreed in favour of the adoption deed. Therefore, not being party to the lis, the judgment and decree shall not be binding upon them.The Bench opined that though the decree being in personam not binding upon the petitioners, yet the said judgment has evidentiary value as per Section 43 of the Evidence Act.“The law is well settled that a judgment in personum [sic] although does not bind non-parties, can be a piece of evidence that would throw light on the matter in debate. What evidentiary weight needs to be attached to such a judgment, is a matter of judicial prudence,” it added.As a corollary, the contents of the judgment of the Civil Court held evidentiary value. As per the judgment, the essential preconditions of a valid adoption were successfully met in the case and the adoption came to be accomplished on 04.07.2003 by way of holding a 'datta homam' (oblation to fire). However, the deed of adoption was registered only on 08.02.2010, almost two years after the death of the adoptive father.Notwithstanding the same, the Bench headed by Justice Shripad was of the firm opinion that a valid adoption comes into existence once the rites and rituals prevalent in the community are performed. In other words, the delayed registration of an adoption deed does not affect the adoption itself. Hence, upon successful performance of the rituals, the adoption comes to existence. Execution and registration of the adoption deed are merely of evidentiary value, bereft of being essential to the adoption itself.“Neither in Section 17(1) of the Registration Act, 1908 nor under the provisions of 1956 Act, we are shown that the registration of the Adoption Deed is a sine qua non for validity of adoption. In other words, once the requisites of valid adoption, as discussed by Mulla's Hindu Law supra, are met, adoption takes effect, regardless of registration,” it further added.In this case, the Court said, the burden of proof as to validity of the adoption was duly discharged by the opposite party by producing the judgments and decrees in two suits, which discussed and decided in favour of legality of the adoption. “If the stipulation in the Circular is complied with, there is no justification whatsoever for denying rehabilitatory appointment, when breadwinner of the family dies in harness, as has happened in the case at hand. The Tribunal has structured the impugned order with this inarticulate premise, some of it being articulate to,” it held.Resultantly, the petition impugning the order of the Tribunal was dismissed. The authorities were directed to implement the order of the Tribunal within two months without fail.Case Title: Union of India & Ors. v. K. Manoj Patra & Ors.Case No: W.P.(C) No. 36932 of 2025Date of Judgment: January 06, 2026Counsel for the Petitioners: Mr. R.K. Kanungo, Senior Panel CounselCounsel for the Opposite Parties: M/s. D.K. Mohanty, S. Nayak, B.N. Behera & S. Das, AdvocatesCitation: 2026 LiveLaw (Ori) 4Click Here To Read/Download Order

Non-Registration Of Valid Adoption No Ground To Deny Compassionate Appointment To Adopted Son: Orissa High Court

Jyoti Prakash Dutta

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