NEW DELHI: Over five months ago, visually-impaired UPSC candidates were close to winning a five year long battle against the DoPT not granting them appointments despite clearing the exam with high scores when the Supreme Court ruled in their favour. Today, stuck in the cycles of bureaucratic red tape, they are nowhere close to being appointed in the civil services.

According to a SC order in October last year, the DoPT was to calculate backlog vacancies for the differently-abled and then accommodate them under the Persons with Disabilities Act 1995. In the October 11, 2013 judgment the SC had directed the government body to “identify the posts for disabled persons within a period of three months from today and implement the same without default.”

In 2008, four visually-impaired UPSC hopefuls — Shiwam Kumar, Pankaj Srivastava, Abhishek Kumar and Rahul Mittal — got more marks than several general category students who cleared the civil services examinations but never got their appointment letters.

The petitioners have not backed down. Shiwam, who is currently employed in a district court in Delhi, has been filing RTIs to find out about the progress of the matter in the DoPT. Pankaj from Lucknow has been travelling back and forth from the capital to secure meetings with DoPT officials.

TOI’s emailed questionnaire and several phone calls to DoPT officials went unanswered. However, Srivastava says an undersecretary in the department has told him that the DoPT has been advised to appeal against the High Court order in the apex court. This order, which came barely three days after the SC order, had scrapped the UPSC’s contention that the visually impaired candidates had taken the exam under a “relaxed standard” by employing a scribe, and hence they could not be considered for appointment on their own merit. The candidates in this case had obtained marks high enough to be considered on their own merit.

The apex court emphasized Rule 17 of the Civil Services Exam Rules, which says: “Provided that where a physically handicapped candidate obtains the minimum qualifying marks in his own merit in the requisite number for General, or the Scheduled Caste or the Scheduled Tribe or other Backward Class category candidates, then, the extra physically handicapped candidates, i.e., more than the number of vacancies reserved for them shall be recommended by the Commission on the relaxed standards and consequential amendments in the rules will be notified in due course.” According to the judgment, the UPSC had argued that it was for the government to notify the rules and not them.

Kumar is not one to give up hope. “We will get our appointments for sure. If they challenge the High Court order, the Supreme Court one will bring clarity. I am disappointed, but not giving up,” says Kumar.

While the DoPT has defaulted on the deadline set for them in October, they have also failed to perform in the Delhi HC review of the matter, says lawyer S K Rungta, counsel for one of the petitioners in the case. “By March 12, the DoPT was supposed to submit an account of backlog vacancies to the High Court which they did not do. They have now been given time until April 28 to do the same,” says Rungta, who is also general secretary of the National Federation for the Blind.

The DoPT had issued an office memorandum on March 20 asking all “ministries/departments/organisations of the government of India” to compute vacancies for the differently-abled. A similar memorandum was also issued on December 3, 2013.

 

souce: timesofindia