NEW DELHI: The Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) has quashed the transfer of Pranjal Patil, India's first visually impaired woman IAS officer, from Delhi to Arunachal Pradesh, saying that the government cannot mechanically apply routine transfer rules without considering the special needs of employees with disabilities.
A bench of judicial member Rajveer Singh Verma passed the order saying that the government's obligation to provide reasonable accommodation under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act takes precedence over administrative transfer guidelines.
The tribunal passed the order on an application filed by Patil, a 2017-batch IAS officer, who has had “no perception of light since childhood”.
"Applying to a totally blind officer, without individual assessment, the same tenure rule that applies to able-bodied officers is the treatment of unequals as equals which the Supreme Court held to be violative of Article 14 in Net Ram Yadav," the November 4 order stated.
According to the petition, Patil was initially allocated the Kerala cadre. In 2018, her request for an inter-cadre transfer to the AGMUT cadre was accepted under a policy applicable to officers with disabilities.
She joined the Delhi segment in January 2020 to access specialised medical treatment and social support, her petition claimed.
However, the Ministry of Home Affairs transferred her to Arunachal Pradesh in September 2024, the petition claimed, adding that her representation against the transfer was subsequently rejected. It further claimed that her grandmother, who was her sole caregiver, had also died two days before the transfer order was issued.
The tribunal rejected central government’s arguments that the IAS officers belonging to the AGMUT cadre were required to serve in different segments, including difficult postings, saying the requirement could not itself constitute an administrative constraint justifying an exception to the protections available to employees with disabilities.
"To treat the requirement of the rotational policy as the constraint that defeats the exemption from that policy would render Part H meaningless," the Tribunal observed.
The petitioner told the tribunal that the transfer violated the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act and Department of Personnel and Training instructions providing exemptions from rotational transfers for employees with disabilities.
She claimed that she required continuous specialised care in Delhi and Noida.
The government had opposed the petition, also claiming that Patil had spent nearly four years in Delhi without completing any tenure in a Category B segment, and that there was also a shortage of senior-scale officers in Arunachal Pradesh.