Judgment Intelligence
Petition AllowedRam Chandra Kadela v. State of Rajasthan & Anr.
2024:RJ-JD:15002
S.B. Civil Writ Petition No. 4962/2017
- Court
- Rajasthan High Court
- Date of Decision
- 4 April 2024
- Bench
- Justice Arun Monga
- Relevant Acts & Sections
- Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995 — Chapter VI, reservation of posts (quoted in para 7 as ‘Rule 33’)
Final Outcome
Writ petition allowed. The respondents must open the sealed cover and, if the result favours the petitioner, give him its benefit at once, issuing an appointment letter within 30 days of his approaching them with a web print of the order, subject to his being found meritorious (paras 9, 11-12).
Key holdings
- A visual impairment that does not affect the duties of a vocal-music post is no ground for exclusion (paras 6-7).
- Reservation for persons with disabilities under the 1995 Act, including blindness or low vision, is a statutory mandate (paras 7-8).
- Dropping the reservation for one post without a plausible reason, while keeping it for others, is discriminatory (para 8).
- The reservation benefit goes to the candidate only if he was found meritorious in the selection (para 9).
- The sealed-cover result must be opened, with an appointment letter within 30 days if he succeeds (paras 10-12).
Case explainer by NyayVidhan: an account of this judgment and the law it laid down, not the court's text. The judgment itself is the authoritative version.
Brief Facts
The Rajasthan Public Service Commission (RPSC) advertised Lecturer posts on 12.01.2015. A corrigendum of 04.03.2016 raised the Lecturer, Music (Vocal) vacancies from 7 to 8 and reserved one for blind or low-vision candidates (para 2.2). After further rounds of examinations, a corrigendum of 01.09.2016 removed that reservation (paras 1, 2.3). The petitioner, a visually impaired Senior Teacher in Music (Vocal), challenged it (paras 2.1, 2.3, 6). The RPSC replied that the corrigendum followed the department's classification of the post and that the petitioner had not obtained even the minimum cut-off marks in his category (paras 3.1-3.2). Under an interim order, his candidature was considered provisionally and his result kept in a sealed cover (para 10).
Court's Findings
With no one appearing for the respondents, the Court decided on their reply (para 4). It framed the question as whether the petitioner's candidature could be rejected for horizontal reservation in the physically handicapped category because he is visually impaired, and answered it in the negative (para 5). His impairment does not impede the duties of the post: he already works as a Senior Teacher in Music (Vocal), and for a vocal-music teacher ‘all that is required to be seen is the vocal cords’ (paras 6-7). Even if the impairment might at times hinder him, that is of no significance under the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995; the Court reproduced the provision requiring not less than three per cent of vacancies for persons with disability, one per cent each for blindness or low vision, hearing impairment and locomotor disability (para 7). The respondents were under a statutory mandate to give that reservation, yet removed it for this post for no plausible reason while according similar reservations to other posts, a discriminatory approach the Court called deplorable (para 8).
Legal Principle
Where the law mandates reservation of posts for persons with disabilities, including blindness or low vision, a recruiting authority cannot drop that reservation for one post without a plausible reason while keeping it for others. A disability that does not affect the duties of the post is no ground to deny the candidate the reserved post (paras 6-8).
