NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Wednesday directed the Union Government’s Department of Personnel and Training to recruit within six weeks a visually-challenged man in the Indian Administrative Service.
The Court also imposed a cost of Rs.25,000 on the DoP&T and asked it to pay the amount to the petitioner. The petitioner, Ravi Prakash, had sought his recruitment in the service submitting that there was a backlog of as many as seven vacancies in IAS for the visually-impaired; therefore, it should be cleared and he should be recruited. He had moved the High Court against a judgment of the Central Administrative Tribunal which had dismissed his petition, allowing argument by the Centre that it had started reserving one seat for the visually-impaired in IAS from 2006 after it decided that the visually-impaired were suitable for the job. The High Court allowed his petition rejecting the plea of the Government. It allowed his contention that the reservation should be implemented from 1996 when the Government had decided to give reservation to physically-challenged candidates in the Union Civil Services. The petitioner through his counsel, visually-impaired advocate S.K. Rungta, submitted that the law says there will be reservation of 1 per cent each for the visually-impaired, the hearing-impaired and the orthopaedically-disabled in the Civil Services of the total vacancies each year. But the Government had instead reserved just one seat in IAS for each category of physically-challenged candidates, Mr. Rungta said. But it did not implement that till 2005, creating a backlog of as many as eight vacancies in this particular category as during the relevant period 786 persons were recruited into the service, the petitioner submitted. The petitioner had appeared in the civil services examinations in 2006 and was ranked fifth in the visually-impaired category. The Court also directed the DoP&T to clear the remaining backlog of vacancies in the service. -- l.pavan("help ever & hurt never") To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in