THE TRIBUNE HAS PUBLISHED THE FOLLOWING NEWS TODAY ON MY PRESS CONFERENCE. EXAMS FOR DISABLED NGO chief threatens to sue govt Tribune News Service Shimla, November 24 Ajai Srivastava, a disability rights’ activist and Chairman of Umang Foundation, yesterday accused the state government of gross violation of orders of the High Court regarding the implementation of the new policy for conducting examinations for persons with disabilities. He threatened to initiate contempt proceedings against the government if no positive action to implement the policy was taken by December 3, the International Day for Disabled. “On a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) plea filed by me, the High Court had directed the government and other respondents on January 7, 2014, to pass ‘appropriate’ orders within eight weeks on the reliefs sought by the petitioner. But even after 10 months, nothing concrete has been done,” he said. Unfortunately, constitutional and statutory bodies like the HP State Public Service Commission, State Board of School Education, Agriculture University, Palampur, Horticulture University, Solan, and Departments of Higher and Elementary Education, had failed to implement the policy framed by the Government of India. Only Himachal Pradesh University (HPU) had implemented the orders, he said. “It is a matter of shame that persons with disabilities are not given equal opportunity and full participation as per the law and a complaint has been sent to the Governor and the Chief Minister in this regard, seeking action against the erring officers”, he added. Hailing the new policy as revolutionary, Srivastava said it ensured equal opportunity for the disabled persons and had to be implemented in all academic, competitive and recruitment examinations. The new policy waved off the pre-conditions of qualification for the writer and accorded an additional hour to disabled persons. Earlier, it was necessary for the writer to be one class lower from the examinee. Now, the onus will be on the invigilator to ensure that no malpractice takes place. Apart from this, the blind and other eligible disabled candidates will get one hour extra in an examination of three hour duration and 20 minutes extra in a paper of one hour. They would be given choice to use braille or computer or recording of answers in examinations, he stated. He further added that it will be the responsibility of examination-conducting agency to provide writers to the blind and other eligible disabled candidates if they do not wish to bring one for themselves. The examination conducting agency will prepare a panel of writers at district and state level, keeping in view the requirement, and remuneration will also be paid to all the writers by the respective agencies. The procedure to allow writers has also been simplified in the new policy and no fee shall be charged from any candidate availing the services and preferably such candidates will be made to sit on the ground floor in separate rooms, he said.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 08:31:23 +0000