THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: India has several legislation such as the Persons With Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995, to dispense natural justice to the physically challenged. But it seems that various state governments have failed to comply with them while making promotion appointments in the period between 1996 and 2013.
The documents accessed by Express revealed that governments ignored the mandatory 4:1 direct recruitment ratio while making promotion appointments to the post of Deputy Collectors.
In the aforementioned period, state governments had effected 660 promotion appointments to the post and only 17 direct recruitments have taken place and no physically challenged persons featured in the list.
If the 4:1 ratio had been maintained more candidates could have been recruited directly. The PSC too seemed to have turned a blind eye to the issue.
“If the authorities had maintained the correct ratio 132 direct recruitments could have been made. Since the formation of the state, only 66 Deputy Collectors have been recruited directly,” said K Madhu, who is engaged in a fight for justice for the physically challenged candidates.
The story of Madhu, a physically challenged IITian, is a signboard to the apathy of the authorities. Despite being the only physically challenged candidate who successfully completed interview at CDAC Thiruvananthapuram in 2010,he was denied the job. In 2012, Madhu was again denied the job despite being the topper in the recruitment of physically challenged faculty in the College of Engineering, Trivandrum’s Electrical Engineering department. He’s yet to get advice memo even after topping the rank list among physically challenged candidates to the post of Deputy Collector in 2014.
He approached the Kerala Administrative Tribunal with his case and KAT took a stand in favour of him in 2014, asking PSC to include him in the rank list. But here too, Madhu may have to wait because a blind candidate will be elevated to top spot despite him being the topper.
His fight to make the authorities implement the roster system of 1, 34 and 67 as directed by the Supreme Court has started yielding results with the PSC, after sitting over the file for five months, telling the government that it could take an appropriate decision.The meeting convened by the Chief Secretary at the behest of Chief Minister, who has been convinced of the injustice meted out to the physically challenged candidates, has decided in principle to implement the roster system of 1,34 and 67 instead of the existing 33,66 and 99.