HC order paves way for promotion of government staff with disabilities

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court (HC) last week relaxed its earlier status quo order and allowed the state government to promote the employees due to retire by June 30, on a condition that the government will also promote employees with benchmark disabilities on Group A and Group B promotional posts identified for them.

The division bench of justice Amjad Sayed and justice Madhav Jamdar further directed that the affidavit shall set out what exercise has been carried out and proposed to be carried out, including the data and statistics that have been collated so far to identify the posts and the outer limit within which the exercise would be completed.

The court was hearing a bunch of petitions filed through advocates Vinod Sangvikar, Sugandh

Deshmukh and Mahendra Shingade, by persons with disabilities complaining about denial of reservation-in-promotion to Group-a and Group-b posts.

During the course of hearing on the petitions on May 7, counsel for the petitioners pointed out that some departments in the government had completed the process of identifying posts to be filled by promotion to the employees with disabilities.

Against this backdrop, HC allowed the state to promote general category employees due to retire by June 30, but on the condition that employees with disabilities are also issued posting orders due to them.

The bench has added that it expects that the process to identify promotional posts for employees with benchmark disabilities in all departments is completed by June 22, when the petitions will come up for further hearing.