The Madras High Court has come to the rescue of a person who was denied the job of a conservancy worker in the High Court because of 90% hearing difficulty. The court has held such denial to be against the provisions of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (PwD) Act, 2016.
A Division Bench of Justices S.M. Subramaniam and K. Rajasekar allowed a writ petition filed by S. Amanullah in 2018 challenging his rejection by the selection committee and directed the Registrar General of the High Court to employ the petitioner as a conservancy worker within four weeks.
The judges agreed with the petitioner’s counsel C. Harsha Raj that there was no reason as to why his client could not be engaged as a conservancy worker in the High Court when he was already performing the same job of sanitary worker successfully in a private institution for several years.
The bench found that the High Court administration had denied the job of conservancy worker to the petitioner based on Rule 25 of the Madras High Court Service Rules, 2015, which states that only those suffering from 40% to 50% hearing difficulty would be considered for the post.
The judge said the service rule required an urgent amendment since it had been framed in accordance with the Persons with Disabilities (equal opportunities, protection of rights and full protection) Act, 1995 and not the PwD Act of 2016, which had replaced the 1995 legislation, with effect from April 19, 2017.
Since the High Court’s recruitment notification in question in the present writ petition had been issued in July 2017, the reservation of posts for the physically challenged candidates ought to have been granted in accordance with the 2016 beneficial legislation, the Division Bench said.
Authoring the verdict, Justice Subramaniam pointed out that the writ petitioner had scored a total of 62.5 (including 46 out of 50 in the written examination, nine out of 15 in the practical exam and 7.25 out of 10 in the interview) out of 80 marks, and yet he was not selected for job, though others with lower marks got through.
The bench also found that not even a single person with hearing difficulties had been appointed as a conservancy worker pursuant to the 2017 recruitment notification, though some with locomotor disabilities had been appointed. It held that denial of employment solely on the basis of hearing difficulty amounted to discrimination and was in violation of the 2016 Act.
