Disability Reservation Must Lead to Permanent Employment
Shimla, Dec 29: Reinforcing the principle that disability reservation must lead to permanent employment, the Himachal Pradesh High Court has ordered the State government to grant retrospective regularisation to a hearing-impaired employee from the date of his initial appointment in 2008.
Justice Sandeep Sharma allowed the petition filed by Deepak Gupta, a Senior Assistant in the IPH Department, and set aside two government orders that had denied him regular status from the initial date of engagement.
The court struck down the rejection orders issued in October 2016 and March 2025, holding that the State had wrongly denied Gupta the same benefit already extended to similarly placed employees with disabilities.
Gupta was appointed as a Clerk on contract basis in 2008 under the Persons with Disabilities quota and was later regularised in 2015. However, his repeated representations seeking regular appointment from the very beginning were turned down by the department, forcing him to approach the High Court again.
While dismissing the State’s argument that disability laws do not mandate regular appointments, the court held that contractual engagement defeats the very objective of reservation under the Persons with Disabilities Act.
The judgment relied on earlier High Court rulings in the Nitin Kumar and Dila Ram cases, both of which were upheld up to the Supreme Court. In those cases, the courts had categorically ruled that reservation under disability laws must translate into regular government service, not temporary or contractual jobs.
The High Court observed that denying Gupta similar relief, despite granting it to other disabled employees in the same department, amounted to unequal and discriminatory treatment.
The State has now been directed to treat Gupta as a regular appointee from the date of his initial appointment, with all consequential benefits including pay fixation, arrears, and seniority.