THIRUVANANTHPAURAM: An IIT alumnus has secured a favourable verdict from Kerala Administrative Tribunal (KAT) on reservation for physically handicapped in government jobs. Tribunal chairman Justice T.R. Ramachandran Nair, while issuing an order on January 19 on a petition filed by K. Madhu, has directed the Social Justice principal secretary to issue an order revising the reservation roster followed by the PSC for physically handicapped candidates while issuing advise memos for government jobs.
The state PSC has been following the rotation pattern of 33:66:99 despite repeated court orders that the pattern 1:34:64 should be followed. If the 1:34:64 pattern is followed, the first advice memo should go to the highest ranked handicapped person in the rank list when vacancies are reported in a department, unlike in the existing scenario where the highest ranked handicapped candidate gets a call only for the 33rd vacancy.
The applicant, K Madhu, is a differently-abled person who obtained his M.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Kharagpur. He had successfully written the preliminary and final examinations for the post of deputy collector. However, in the rank list published by the PSC no person was included in the physically handicapped category. Madhu had challenged this in 2015, and KAT had directed the PSC to include the applicant in the rank list.
But when the applicant asked the PSC to send him an advice, he was told that the reservation for the physically handicapped category was fixed as 33:66: 99 and that only 16 persons have been advised since January 1, 2008. However, the KAT order pointed out that 33 candidates had been advised since 1996, none among them are physically handicapped. The urgency of the KAT order was dictated by the fact that the extended period of the rank list will expire on June 30, 2017. In this context, the Tribunal asked the state to "expedite" decision on fixing the physically handicapped roster along the 1:34:67 pattern.
