JASWANT SINGH Vs. STATE OF HARYANA AND ANR.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Sh. Jaswant Singh Pannu has filed the present writ petition under Article 226/227 of the Constitution of India praying that a writ in the nature of mandamus be issued against the respondents calling upon them to fill up the vacancies of posts of quality Inspector falling under 3% quota of persons with disabilities reserved as per Sec. 33 of The Persons with Disabilities ( Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995 (hereinafter referred to as the Act).

(2.) The case set up by the petitioner is that with the coming into force the aforesaid Act, as per Sec. 33, the State Government is to appoint in every establishment such percentage of vacancies not less than 3% for persons or class of persons with disability of which one per cent each shall be reserved for persons suffering from blindness or low vision, hearing impairment and locomotor disability or cerebral palsy. Since no concrete steps were taken by the State of Punjab for implementation of the Act, therefore, CWP No. 14167 of 1997 was filed in which the State of Punjab was directed to fill up the vacancies reserved for persons with disabilities. Thereafter, the State of Punjab issued various letters to all the Heads of Departments, Boards/Corporations etc requiring them to clear backlog by recruiting persons with disability in their respective departments. Not only this the State of Punjab also issued a letter dated 17.4.2000 to all the Heads of Departments Boards and Corporations reserving 3% of vacancies for persons with disabilities.

(3.) According to the petitioner, in the year 1997 -98 applications were invited by respondent No. 2 for direct recruitment against the 18 posts of Quality Inspectors, out of which one post was reserved for physically handicapped person. He applied for the post of Quality Inspector under the physically handicapped quota and appeared in the written test conducted in 23.8.1998 by respondent No. 2. He qualified the said test and was short listed for interview. The interview was scheduled to be held on 16.9.1998, but the same could not be organised as the respondent authorities issued a notice in the newspapers scraping all the interviews on the pretext that a ban has been imposed on all the recruitments. The petitioner waited for the sufficient long time with the hope that the respondent No. 2 will restart a recruitment process, but nothing happened. In short, the grievance of the petitioner is that directions be issued to respondent No. 2 to fill the backlog vacancies which are meant for the handicapped quota as per the provisions of Sec. 33 of the Act.