Mumbai: Bombay HC recently expressed surprise at Indian Overseas Bank for its “lack of sympathetic approach” towards a clerical staffer, who wanted to forgo a promotion that entailed a transfer to Chennai, so that she could be in Mumbai with her 10-year-old child who has 95% visual impairment. Directing her transfer back to Mumbai with effect from Jan 1, it said the woman was making sacrifices as a mother for her child’s sake.
HC said it was making an exception for the woman, whose decision could not be faulted as it was in the best interest of her own child, on purely humanitarian grounds. “We see no hesitancy in holding that an employee, who is the focal point of any administration, deserves empathy,” said a bench of Justices Bharati Dangre and Ashwin Bhobe. Justice Dangre, who authored the order, said the bank’s approach lacked human sensitivity.
The bench imposed costs of Rs 25,000 on the bank and directed that the sum be paid to the National Association for the Blind in four weeks.
The bank had rejected the woman’s request in Sept 2024 to cancel her promotion as an assistant manager. On Dec 18, HC noted that the bank’s counsel said it would consider her plea to forgo her promotion and be shifted back to Mumbai. However, on Dec 31, the bank wrote to her stating that since she had accepted the promotion, it was now irrevocable under its policy.
HC directed the bank not to subject the woman to any adverse action in her service career. It said in the future, if she seeks to apply for promotion as an assistant manager, she may be allowed to apply. HC passed its order after hearing the woman’s lawyer, Hamza Lakdawala, and the bank’s lawyer Rishi Bekal.
It noted a change in the bank’s stance with a change in its counsel. While in Dec, after a series of hearings, the bank was willing to accept the woman’s request to forgo the promotion, on Jan 3, when the matter was again heard, its new counsel said since it had no such policy, it could not send her back to Mumbai and she could raise her child just as easily in Chennai, which is also a metropolis.
“What startled us is the approach adopted by the employer,” HC said. A mother understands the arduous task of shifting her 10-year-old to a new environment, it said. “We really find it difficult to appreciate the stand of the bank as… it is the mother who can make a better decision for her own child and definitely she will not rely on the decision of a stranger, specifically those at the helm of affairs of the bank, who feel Chennai would be a better place for her son.”
