Treat the differently-abled as the “most treasured” passengers, the Delhi High Court on Monday told the Railways which it blamed for a visually impaired man missing his M.Phil entrance exam as he could not board a reserved coach since it was locked from inside.
A Bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C.Hari Shankar noted that the youth tried to reach Delhi on July 3 for the exam to be held on July 5, but could not as he first did not get a confirmed seat.
On July 4, when he arrived at the station, the train was running late. When the Gorakhdham Express finally arrived, he, however, couldn’t enter the coach for the differently-abled as it was locked from inside.
DU slammed
Delhi University (DU), too, was ticked off by the Bench for taking an “adversarial stand” in the matter by saying that the man, Vaibhav Shukla, did not seem interested in appearing for the test as he took a train to Delhi on the afternoon of July 5 when the exam was scheduled in the morning of the same day. “It is the Indian Railways which prevented him from taking the exam,” the court observed during the hearing of the PIL which it initiated on its own after coming across a news report in the matter.
“You need to do much more,” it told the Railways, which claimed it had re-designed 3,200 out of nearly one lakh luggage coaches to be made disabled-friendly.
Placing of coaches
The court also advised the Railways not to put such special coaches at the extreme front or the rear of a train as at smaller stations, these would be outside the platform area, making it difficult for the differently-abled to access them easily.
