Cannot return post if recipient is dead; should be delivered to legal heir: HC

Chennai: Madras high court has refused to declare Rule 51 of the Postal Regulation Rules, which mandates its personnel to return the post to the original sender in case of death of the recipient, as unconstitutional. Instead, the court directed the department to deliver the post to the available legal heir until the rule is amended.

The first bench of Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and Justice G Arul Murugan passed the order while disposing of a plea moved by Mohana Ramaswami of Chennai. She contended that the rule suffered from manifest arbitrariness, inasmuch as it was clearly in conflict with Regulation 65(1)(c).


The petitioner said that by framing such a conflicting provision in the regulations, the provision relating to delivery of posts in respect of a dead person was uncertain and vague. "A fair and logical interpretation of the two rules would only mean that, in those cases where the addressee of an undelivered item is dead and there is no person to whom the item could properly be delivered, then it shall be delivered to the sender or authorised person, and any proof of delivery thereto shall not be delivered and destroyed," the court said.

The regulation does not expressly provide the category of the persons to whom the item can properly be delivered. There appears to be a gap, and this is causing inconvenience to persons like the petitioner, the court added.

The postal department shall do well to take steps either by amending the regulation to clearly define the category of persons to whom the items could properly be delivered, or by filling the gap in the regulation by clarifying the position. Until such amendment, it is directed that the legal heirs of the deceased, if they are found at the residence of the deceased, shall be handed the article, the court said.