Bombay HC paves the way for promotion of govt employees with disabilities

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 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.

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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.

Acting on their petitions, HC has on November 3, 2020, stayed the process for finalising promotions to Group-A and Group-B posts in some departments after noticing that the right to reservation in promotion of the physically challenged persons was recognised by the Supreme Court, and a proposal for identifying the posts and working out modalities for providing such reservation was already placed before the state cabinet for approval.

HC had thereafter also refused to vacate the stay on January 15 this year by observing that the promotion process cannot be allowed without securing the rights of the petitioners - employees with benchmark disabilities - the general administration department had renewed the plea claiming that the Apex court had subsequently thought it fit to place the matter of reservation-in-promotion for persons with benchmark disabilities for review before a larger bench.

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. The lawyers pointed out that in some cases promotion orders were also issued and what remained to be done was to issue posting orders.

Against this backdrop, HC allowed the state government to promote general category employees due to retire by June 30, 2021, but on the condition that the 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.