All India Confederation of the Blind versus Indian Railways
(Delhi High Court order and judgment dated 7th March 2012 in Writ Petition No. 23132 / 2005)
In this precedent setting case argued by the Disability Law Initiative in the High Court of Delhi, India’s largest public sector employer, the Indian Railways, has been directed by the Court on 7th March 2012 to take positive action to employ more than 4000 disabled persons.
In India, there are over 70 million disabled persons who have historically been marginalized and have faced discriminatory barriers in education, employment and equal opportunity / equal participation. The Persons with Disabilities Act, which came into force in 1996, mandates that public sector employers (i.e Central and State Governments and autonomous institutions / organizations / bodies owned, controlled or aided by the Governments) take positive steps to employ the visually, hearing and orthopedic impaired persons to the extent of 3% of their openings at all levels from 1996 onwards. This provision is an exemplary provision because employment of disabled persons is vital for their integration into the social mainstream. India is one of a very few nations to mandate such a positive measure. Since the public sector work force is massive and numbers in the tens of millions, implementation of this provision would result in hundreds of thousands of employment opportunities at executive, managerial, clerical and skilled / unskilled worker levels for persons with disabilities.
However, this legal requirement has remained largely on paper ever since the inception of the Disabilities Act. Very few public sector employers have taken the trouble to even calculate 3% of their vacancies, and no major one has actually implemented the requirement substantially. As a result, while disabled persons continue to face barriers and prejudice in matters of employment, most of the jobs that ought to have been filled by them since 1996 remain unfilled.
In the instant case, DLI represented the All India Confederation of the Blind, a Delhi based non-profit organization, arguing that whereas the Indian Railways, India’s largest public sector employer, had embarked on large scale recruitment drives at all ranks and levels since 1996 in order to meet their growth, disabled persons had largely been ignored by them. In precedent setting directions, the Court directed the Railways to calculate their backlog in vacancies to be filled by disabled persons ever since the Disabilities Act came into force in 1996 and to report the same to the Court. DLI monitored the calculation by the Railways and in a joint report along with the Railways, informed the Court that over 4000 jobs, including 66 posts in the Railway Civil Services – the elite administrative cadre of the Railways – were yet to be filled by disabled persons in the Railways. With the benefit of hard data as contained in the joint report, the Court on 7th March 2012 directed that the Railways conduct a special recruitment drive to fill the backlog in jobs for disabled persons within six months. As a result, the Railways have already advertised several jobs earmarked for disabled persons in the Railway Civil Services, and the recruitment process in the other grades and cadres is underway. This case serves as a precedent for taking recourse to public interest litigation to further the cause of employment of disabled persons.