UPSC Headquarters in New Delhi. File.
| Photo Credit: R. V. Moorthy
Nearly six months after the Supreme Court directed the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) to consider appointments to 12 visually impaired candidates against the backlog vacancies meant for them under the persons with disabilities (PwD) quota, the UPSC has now issued a public notice saying that it can no longer find any details of two of these candidates in its records, and asked the candidates to get in touch with their details.
These candidates appeared in the civil services examination held in 2008, following which some of them have been in courts and tribunals for nearly two decades to get appointments under the PwD quota meant for them. The Supreme Court had in July 2024 directed officials to consider their appointments under the quota within three months of its order while coming down hard on the Centre for failing to implement provisions of the Persons with Disabilities Act and fill backlog vacancies.
In a public notice issued by the UPSC, it said the dossiers containing the documents and details of two of the candidates — Anil Kumar Singh and Hira Lal Nag, both visually impaired and belonging to the Other Backward Classes (OBC) community — were “not available in the UPSC”. As a result, the Commission said the notice was being issued to make contact with them.
The UPSC has given seven days for the candidates to get in touch with the organisation with the required details so that they can be allocated services as per the judgment of the Supreme Court. It said if the responses are not received in this time, “it may be presumed that these candidates are no longer interested for being considered for allocation of services…”
In a compliance affidavit filed by the Secretary, Department of Personnel and Training, the government said it had complied with the July 2024 judgment of the top court. It said that of the 12 candidates who were to benefit from the judgment, five had already been allocated services based on the CSE-2008 or previous CSE results. Apart from this, three candidates, including the lead respondent in the Supreme Court case, had been allocated services as per the judgment.
For the remaining three candidates, which includes the above mentioned two who the UPSC has not yet been able to contact, the DoPT said that in-principle approval had been granted to allocate services subject to the findings of the medical examinations.
The government had said that since medical examination reports of these candidates were not available with the department, a fresh examination was required to be conducted, which is being scheduled at AIIMS and Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi.
He first approached the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), which gave the UPSC and the DoPT six months to calculate the backlog vacancies under the PWD Act, 1995. CAT also directed the Union of India to inform Srivastava if service could be allocated to him.
Following this, the UPSC told Mr. Srivastava in September 2011 that he did not qualify for the merit list within the available vacancies for his category. After another application, the CAT directed that the candidates belonging to category VI must be selected against the reserved category and be given an appointment but the UPSC informed him in 2012 that he was not qualified for appointment in the PH-2 (VI) quota.
The Union government then challenged the CAT judgement in the Delhi High Court, where it was dismissed. Following this, the Centre then went ahead to move the Supreme Court in the matter.
Published – January 04, 2025 02:15 am IST
