Disclaimer: This has been reported after the availability of the order of the Court and not on media reports so as to give an accurate report to our readers.
Punjab and Haryana High Court: In a petition filed under Article 226 and 227 of the Constitution seeking quashing of order passed by Respondent 1 whereby the claim of the petitioner, a visually impaired employee of the Forest Department, was dismissed without due consideration of State Government’s issued relaxation regarding promotional eligibility, a Single Judge Bench of Sandeep Moudgil, J., held that the law must bend toward inclusion, and the specially-abled citizen should not be left standing outside the doors of opportunity to which the Constitution has already given a key.
Accordingly, the Court set aside the order and stated that the petitioner was entitled to promotion against the 3 per cent reservation quota for physically handicapped, and should be accorded notional promotion to the post of Forest Guard from 2003 and Forester from 2013
Background
In the case at hand, the petitioner was appointed as Mali in June 1998 and as per the applicable service rules, the next promotional post in the cadre was of Forest Guard. The petitioner became eligible for consideration to the said post in 2003 and was promoted in August 2007 after the Government granted relaxation of certain conditions prescribed under the Rules.
Next in hierarchy was the promotional post of Forester and under Haryana State Forest Employees Group ‘C’ Service Rules 1998, it required ten years’ experience as Forest Guard and completion of Forest Guard training. The petitioner became eligible for consideration in 2013, and he got promoted in 2021 after the Government granted relaxation from the mandatory training requirement.
The Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995 (‘Persons with Disabilities Act 1995’) provided for 3% horizontal reservation, including 1 per cent for persons with blindness or low vision. In July 2023, the State Government issued instructions extending the benefit of horizontal reservation for persons with disabilities, including the 1 per cent quota for individuals with blindness or low vision retrospectively from January 1996 to April 2017.
Petitioner’s representation before the competent authority regarding his claim for promotion from the dates of eligibility was considered by the Additional Chief Secretary who declined to grant retrospective effect to the petitioner’s promotions.
Analysis and Decision
The Court stated that it was significant to understand the vision of the framers of laws for protection of persons with disabilities. The disability rights regime in India should be understood not merely as a set of statutory prescriptions but as an expression of the constitutional promise of equality, dignity, and full participation. The Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995 marked a decisive shift from a charity-based model to one centered on equal opportunity. It imposed affirmative obligations on the State to identify posts suitable for persons with disabilities. The provisions reflected the understanding that equality could not be realised unless institutions actively dismantled barriers that historically excluded specially abled persons from public employment.
The Persons with Disabilities Act 1995 was replaced by the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 represented further evolution in legislative design aligned with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It incorporated the principles of non-discrimination, respect for inherent dignity, equality of opportunity, and reasonable accommodation and required the State to move beyond formal equality by adopting structural adjustments that enabled persons with disabilities to participate on an equal basis with others.
The Court stated that the issue in the present case was a narrow one as to “whether a visually impaired employee was entitled to be considered for promotion against the 1 per cent quota earmarked for persons with blindness or low vision under the Persons with Disabilities Act 1995 and whether such consideration ought to have been accorded from the dates on which he became eligible.”
The Court noted that there was no dispute that the petitioner was the sole visually impaired employee in the feeder cadres during the relevant period. Further, the Court stated that as per the instructions issued by the State of Haryana in 2023, during both periods of promotional eligibility, the reservation for persons with visual disability was operative.
Regarding the respondent’s plea that the petitioner did not meet the prescribed physical standards, the Court stated that the same could not stand in view of the proviso to Section 33 of the Persons with Disabilities Act 1995. Thus, if the State sought to exclude a post from the ambit of reservation, it should do so through a notified exemption after forming an opinion that the nature of duties justified such exclusion and no such notification was produced. Further, the Court stated that a pending proposal for exemption does not satisfy the statutory requirement. Thus, the reservation continued to apply in full measure.
The Court stated that by virtue of State’s 2023 instructions, the petitioner stood fully eligible for consideration against the reserved vacancy for visually impaired persons during the years in which he first became eligible for promotion. The Court further stated that the retrospective application of the said instructions removed any doubt that the disability quota ought to have been operated in the petitioner’s case when the promotional vacancies arose in 2003 and 2013, and that the petitioner, being the only employee with visual disability in the relevant cadre, was entitled to consideration against those reserved vacancies.
The Cour highlighted that mandate under Article 16 of the Constitution and stated that the record revealed that no exercise was undertaken by the respondents to compute or fill disability-quota vacancies during the years when the petitioner was eligible and this omission was clear breach of Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution.
The Court highlighted that the fact that promotions were granted on the dates of relaxation overlooked the statutory requirement that the disability quota should be operated annually and unfilled vacancies carried forward. Therefore, the order was not found sustainable in law.
Further, the Court stated that “measure of a compassionate State is not how it treats the strong, but how it uplifts those whose circumstance has made it vulnerable. When statutory rights meant to level an uneven field are allowed to wither by bureaucratic indifference, the Court must intervene not out of sentiment, but out of respect to the Constitution’s ethic. Equality is not a mechanical formula but a human commitment.” Thus, the law must bend toward inclusion, lest the specially-abled citizen be left standing outside the doors of opportunity to which the Constitution has already given him a key.
The Court recognized that the right to be free from disability-based discrimination enshrined in the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 and stated that the petitioner was entitled to promotion against the 3 per cent reservation quota for physically handicapped, and should be accorded notional promotion to the post of Forest Guard from 2003 and Forester from 2013.
Hence, the Court allowed the petition at hand and set aside the challenged order.
[Bhim Singh v. State of Haryana, 2025 SCC OnLine P&H 15411, decided on 1-12-2025]
Advocates who appeared in this case :
For the Petitioner: Abhijeet Singh Rawaley, Advocate
For the Respondent: Deepak Balyan, Addl. AG, Haryana