Bombay High Court seeks assistance of Advocate General in plea for transgender reservation in MahaTransco

The Bombay High Court on Monday sought the assistance of Advocate General Dr Birendra Saraf on the plea regarding reservation for transgender persons in Maharashtra State Electricity Transmission Co. Ltd. (MSETCL)..A bench of acting Chief Justice SV Gangapurwala and Sandeep Marne was hearing a petition filed by one Vinayak Kashid, a graduate in Electrical Engineering and post graduate in Technology (Electrical Power System Engineering), seeking modification to the advertisement issued by MahaTransco in May this year for mass recruitment.The bench was informed by the additional government pleader Manish Pabale about an order passed by a co-ordinate bench directing Maharashtra government to come up with a policy for recruitment of transgender persons to government posts.The State counsel informed that the bench that the government was in the process of coming up with a policy, which MSETCL could then adopt for themselves. The Court kept the matter for further consideration on February 27.It, however, asked the Advocate General to remain present for his assistance in the case. .The advertisement issued by the MahaTransco was to recruit Assistant Engineers (Transmission) for 170 vacant posts.However, the advertisement did not specify for reservation for the transgender community. Aggrieved by the exclusion of transgender community, Kashid approached the concerned authorities through phone calls and email.However, when there was no response to the same, Kashid approached the High Court. Advocate Abhijeet Joshi for MSETCL urged the Court to permit the company to proceed with its recruitment process since the State policy was going to take some more time to be formulated. He pointed out that the examination was held and the company had selected 233 candidates for occupying various posts. .Advocate Kranti LC stated that publishing the results could adversely affect Kashid and for this reason the State ought to be restrained..The division bench was not inclined to restrain disclosure of results and granted liberty to the company to publish the same. The bench opined that the entire recruitment process could not be stayed for over a month, and the petitioner had a chance of getting an appointment on merits without any reservation.