"Reservation for disabled not provided properly": Delhi High Court quashes Kendriya Vidyalaya ad for teaching jobs

The Delhi High Court on Monday pulled up the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) for restricting participation of People with Disabilities in the recruitment process and ordered them to strictly implement the 4% reservation mandated by The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (RPwD Act) [National Federation of the Blind v Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan & Ors]..A Division Bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Sanjeev Narula held that the KVS’ advertisement of August 2018 for recruitment to the posts of Principal, Vice Principal, Post Graduate Teachers, Trained Graduate Teachers, Librarian etc was discriminatory and in violation of the RPwD Act.The Court, therefore, set aside the advertisement and issued a slew of directions to the KVS. .It ordered the KVS to conduct an audit of the total number of vacancies in the establishment and prepare a vacancy based roster within 3 months and file an affidavit of the same along with a timeline for filling the said vacancies.“If any vacancy, which ought to have been reserved in accordance with the 2016 Act, has already been filled by any person not falling in the reserved category due to failure of the respondent to reserve the same, the respondent shall adjust those vacancies from the unreserved pool of the available vacancies. Such vacancies shall be deemed to be unfilled and accordingly, shall be considered to have been carried forward from the vacancies notified in the impugned advertisement,” the Court said.The Court also said that KVS shall compute the number of vacancies to be reserved for the persons with disabilities against the total number of vacancies in the cadre strength in each group, inclusive of both identified and unidentified posts.“The final appointment shall be made against the identified posts, even if the actual number of persons with disabilities appointed at a given post exceeds four percent; The respondent shall not create sub-categories subject-wise within a cadre; The vacancies shall be calculated on the total number of vacancies in a particular cadre and not on posts. The respondent shall reserve the post of Principal for persons with benchmark disabilities in blind or low vision category at a minimum of one percent for that particular category," the judgment said. .The Court passed these directions while dealing with a public interest litigation (PIL) petition filed by National Federation of the Blind arguing that the KVS has not implemented the statutory reservation for PwD candidates, particularly for blind persons.It was stated that the advertisement was in violation of Section 34 of the RPwD Act which mandates 4 percent reservation for PwD candidates in both the identified and unidentified posts, out of which three categories of PwDs are entitled to 1 percent each of the reserved vacancies.The Court was told the advertisement excluded the post of principal from the posts reserved for persons with visual disability and this was also absurd because the post of principal is a promotional post for the post of vice principal and the post of vice principal is a feeder post reserved for blind persons..After considering the case, the Bench observed that the KVS’ advertisement distinguishes persons with disabilities from others and puts a restriction on their potential to participate in the recruitment process to their full ability."It may be noted that an act of discrimination is not only a denial of the promise of equal protection before the law. Rather, every act of exclusion is an assault on the dignity of a person. More so, when the exclusion has the effect of compelling the persons with disabilities out of a race for gaining employment, without any fault of theirs. Instead of providing an equal space to grow, we have been compelling the persons with disabilities to prove, time and again, that they are capable of a lot more than we think,” the judgment stated. The Court regretfully noted that despite the passage of almost four decades of the movement, one United Nations’ Convention and two legislations passed by the parliament, we were still struggling to fulfil our promises made to the persons with disabilities.The more things change, the more they remain the same, the Bench said..Senior Advocate SK Rungta and Advocate Prashant Singh appeared for the petitioner National Federation of the Blind.KVS was represented through advocates S Rajappa and R Gourishankar.Advocates Govind Manoharan, Diksha Tiwari, Apurva Singh, Anchit Singla and Nishchaiy appeared for NCTE.Central Government Standing Counsel (CGSC) Monika Arora as well as advocate Yash Tyagi and Subhrodeep Saha appeared for the Union of India..[Read Judgment]