A Division Bench of the Chhattisgarh High Court, comprising Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Bibhu Datta Guru, held that in exercise of powers under Section 34 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, the State is entitled to interchange reservation among benchmark disability categories. Thus, the absence of reservation for visually impaired candidates in Commerce faculty Assistant Professor posts was not unlawful.
The case arose from an advertisement issued by the Chhattisgarh Public Service Commission (CGPSC) on 23 January 2019 for 1,384 posts of Assistant Professor, of which 184 were in Commerce. A corrigendum dated 23 February 2019 amended the number of posts reserved for physically handicapped (disabled) persons. The appellant, being visually impaired, applied on 14 March 2019. She cleared the written examination of November 2020 and qualified for interview, but did not figure in the final selection list. She filed a writ petition seeking that 2% reservation for blind and low vision persons be explicitly provided in the Commerce faculty, both in current and backlog vacancies, and that posts not be filled without including that reservation. She pointed out that in an earlier advertisement dated 10 September 2014, visually handicapped candidates were included for reservation in Commerce posts, whereas in the 2019 advertisement and its corrigendum, visually impaired persons were excluded.
In defence, respondents submitted that the identification of posts for reservation is administrative in nature, lying with the State government, not the recruiting agency. They contended the recruitment followed the 100-point roster policy enacted on 27 September 2014, which was amended on 10 April 2019 to comply with the 7% reservation required under the RPwD Act, 2016. Regarding the Commerce faculty posts, the State had designated the posts as suitable only for persons with disability categories of One Arm (OA) and One Leg (OL), because the job entailed “extensive writing and numerical work.” Under Section 34 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, the State is empowered to interchange vacancies among the five categories of benchmark disabilities if the nature of the post is incompatible with a particular disability.
The High Court observed that the appointing authority is best placed to assess whether a particular disability category can perform the duties of a post; therefore judicial interference in academic or administrative decisions of suitability must be limited. It held that the nature of the Commerce faculty job justified limiting reservation to OA and OL categories, given the textual and numerical demands. The Court found that the policy of interchange of categories was followed, and that reserving posts for visually impaired candidates in Commerce was not mandatory under the RPwD Act if those posts are held unsuitable for persons with that disability.
The Court further noted that the appellant, after participating in the competition without raising objection to the advertisement’s terms, cannot at a later stage challenge it simply because she was not selected. The principle that one who voluntarily accepts the terms of a public advertisement or recruitment process cannot later challenge a condition of it—especially when that condition was transparent—was invoked.
In light of the above, the High Court upheld the decision of the Single Judge which had earlier dismissed the appellant’s writ petition. The appeal was dismissed, confirming that excluding visually impaired candidates from Commerce faculty posts on the basis that those posts were designated suitable only for OL and OA disabilities was lawful and valid.
0 Comments
Thank you for your response. It will help us to improve in the future.