CHENNAI: The Central Administrative Tribunal’s Chennai bench issued a notice to the Central government and the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) to respond to a plea moved by M Puranasunthari, a visually impaired 25-year-old woman from Madurai, who secured 286th rank in the Civil Services Examination (CSE), 2019.
In her plea, Puranasunthari had stated that despite securing 286th position, she was offered only the Indian Revenue Services (IRS), and not the Indian Administrative Services (IAS). The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules, 2017 was never followed by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) and the UPSC during the recruitment notification, the petitioner stated.
Despite a mandated rule stating that all government recruitment notifications to fill up vacancies shall indicate the number of vacancies reserved for each class of persons with benchmark disabilities in accordance with the provisions of section 34 of the Act, the petitioner said neither the employment notification nor the UPSC website had adhered to the rule.
“Though the four per cent reservation came into force in April 2017, the new roster system was communicated only in January 2018. Even as other services like IRS (IT), IFS, IRS (C&CE), and IAAS had notified the new category of disability (multiple disabilities) in the notification, it was never included in the IAS, in CSE-2018.
Hence, the reservation was not correctly implemented in 2018,” she said. The counsel for the petitioner, R Kannan, also contended that the DoPT had wrongly allocated the services with three roster blocks in CSE-2018 by avoiding the multiple disabilities category. The bench directed the UPSC to file a detailed report, and adjourned the matter to January.