A blanket test for the disabled who have applied for government jobs may be “impractical” and a “one-size-fit-all” model may not be the most efficient, the High Court has observed.
A bench of justices S Ravindra Bhat and Deepa Sharma said that every disability required a specific aid and came with specific restrictions and that the criteria of ‘40 per cent disability’ on the Indian Disability Evaluation Assessment (IDEA) scale “cannot be held ideal”.
The court concluded that there were deficiencies in the Persons With Disabilities (PWD) Act with regard to providing job reservation and the 40 per cent criteria for classifying a person as disabled. “A blanket 40 per cent disability test to provide reservations in employment may be impracticable. A particular disability suffered by an individual might require specific aid and comes with specific restrictions... a ‘one-size-fit-all model’ might not be the most efficient. That 40 per cent on IDEA scale makes individuals more or less employable cannot be held ideal,” it said.
“The 40 per cent threshold could be a barrier, unwitting though the case may be, and eliminate many from being classified as disabled. This gives a discriminatory result, and an indirect discriminatory effect,” the bench said.
The court’s observations came as it dismissed an appeal against its single-judge order rejecting a plea of a civil service aspirant, suffering from severe depression with obsessive-compulsive disorder, claiming that the PWD Act excluded persons with mental illness for the purpose of job reservations. — PTI
